Why Edward James Olmos Quit Riding Motorcycles at 25

ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to One Fast Move star Edward James Olmos about the motorcycle racing drama. Olmos discussed his character and working with K.J. Apa and Eric Dane. The film is now streaming on Prime Video.

“One Fast Move is an action-adventure thrill ride about a young man down on his luck who seeks out his estranged father to help him pursue his dream of becoming a professional motorcycle racer,” says the synopsis. “With the help of his small town love interest and a motorcycle shop owner who moonlights as his mentor, he begins to break down the walls that his father’s absence had built up.”

Tyler Treese: In One Fast Move, you run a motorcycle shop, and it’s very clear that your character cares about every person who walks in the door. What did you like most about this role?

Edward James Olmos: Oh, it was something I’m very grateful for. It’s a simple role. It’s a guy who’s just trying to live his life after making a ton of mistakes that you learn a little bit about as a story evolves. But he’s got a lot of backstory that is very dark and difficult to take. At the same time, he deals with people with kindness and respect even though it’s inside of a world that is kind of fast, especially when it comes to the kind of racing that they do.

My character, Abel, was one of the great racers. He befriended and takes under his wing the father, Dean, which is Eric Dane’s character. He takes him in and helps him become one of the world’s best racers. [Dean ends] up getting into an accident and destroying his back and finding it very difficult to race competitively like he used to.

Then all of a sudden, out of years of understanding his life, Dean has to understand that he’s got a kid and the woman that he left was pregnant. So he never knew the child, and all of a sudden a child comes walking into his life and boy, that’s when you really start to understand what it means to face your realities and what you’ve done with your life when karma comes forward.

K.J. Apa plays the son, and they have a very strained relationship as you were speaking to. There are scenes where they’re frustrated with each other, but they kind of take it out on you. So how was it filming those scenes where you’re kind of in the crossfire there of their frustrations?

You know, I understand their realities. It’s not like I’m not aware of how difficult it is, what they’re going through, because my realities got me to the point of where I had to go through ’em myself, but not in the same way. But my, my past is, well, you’ll learn a little bit about it in some scenes with K.J., who plays Wes, the boy. We have some really wonderful scenes together. As I do with Dean, who is play by Eric Dane. All the acting in this is really, really strong. Very strong. And Maia Reficco plays a great role as the love interest, and she’s got her own problem.

Everybody in this is dysfunctional, and the world is a dysfunctional world. Like who wants to ride over 200 miles an hour around curves and go competitively against other people who are trying to race and win? And who does that? I mean, you, you say, “Well, Formula 1 race drivers.” Yeah, but Formula 1 race drivers are in a car. You’re talking about motorcycles and you’re talking about speeds that are competitive to car racing. It’s a big difference between riding on a car and riding on a bike.

You used to ride motorcycles when you were younger, right?

Yes, I did. I rode when I was young, but I quit at a young age too. I stopped when I was 25. I had my first child, and I stopped smoking and I stopped riding motorcycles because I had lost friends on motorcycles. They’d been killed. It’s not a sport that you should take lightly.

It’s a wonderful sport. You’ll see in the movie that it’s amazing that the athleticism of these characters, of the people who do this, is unbelievable. Once you start seeing it, you go, “Oh my God, how in the world do you do this? How do you learn how to do this?” And then you go from there.

Thanks to Edward James Olmos for taking time to discuss One Fast Move, which is now streaming on Prime Video.