TORQUE

1/2 (one and one half stars)

“The Fast and the Furious” with bikes.Running time: 81 minutes. PG- 13 (violence, sexuality, language and drug references). At the Empire, the Kips Bay, the Loews 34th Street, others.

THE proudly trashy “Torque” accelerates through a quick-cut montage of posturing bikers, thong-flashing babes and acres of gleaming chrome with a blithe disregard to character development or plot.

It’s a simple-minded celebration of speed that pretends to be nothing else, even throwing in the occasional wink to acknowledge its own silliness.

Music video helmer Joseph Kahn puts pedal to the metal from the outset, cranking up the decibels and piling on the rev-head eye candy with all the subtlety of a tire iron to the head.

Carey Ford (played by Martin Henderson of “The Ring,” with tongue planted firmly in cheek) comes screeching back into the life of his beautiful biker-chick girlfriend, Shane (Monet Mazur), after a six-month spell in Thailand.

He had skipped town after being set up on drug charges, and his return sparks some of the dumbest exchanges in a movie ripe with laughably fatuous dialogue.

“I hear you was in Indo-China eating sushi and s – – -,” says Ice Cube’s biker gang leader, Trey, unleashing the first in a battery of cartoon snarls.

Ford is in possession of two motorbikes belonging to another gang leader, Henry (Matt Schulze). Because their tanks are full of millions of dollars worth of crystal meth, Henry wants them back.

Henry frames Ford for the murder of Trey’s younger brother, and soon Henry, Trey and a sketchy, sneakers-clad FBI agent (Adam Scott) are all in hot pursuit of their quarry.

Scrawny premise in place, “Torque” becomes one long road chase through flat California desert and the streets of Los Angeles, pumped up by exaggerated sound effects and over-the-top stunts, and intercut with loving close-ups of the muscular machines one character derisively refers to as “crotch rockets.”

It makes the occasional pit stop for a surprisingly chaste love affair and throws in an inane “twist” toward the end, but essentially it’s just a full-throttle video-game ride for the MTV set.