'GTMax' Movie Ending Explained & Summary: Did Soelie Save Michael?

GTMax is a 2024 French action thriller film on Netflix that boasts high-speed scooter races, intense adrenaline-boosting chase scenes, a grand heist, and a tale of family drama, all in a compact package. The plot is centered around siblings Soelie and Michael Carella, who have to get involved in some rather shady businesses after their father, Daniel, gets into financial trouble. With this family of motocross racers at its center, GTMax goes about spinning an interesting story of crime and family and is rather entertaining as a quick and mindless watch.

Spoiler Alert

What is the film about?

GTMax begins with a high-speed chase on the streets of Paris as a police unit in cars and on motorcycles tries to pursue a group of robbers escaping on three customized scooters. Although the leader of the unit, Lieutenant Lucas Delvo, is given the order to stop the chase simply because of the property damage it has been causing on the roads, he refuses to let the criminals escape. But Delvo has to stop eventually, when he alone continues the chase and finally crashes, much to his frustration. The police officer, who was himself once a biker and racer competing in the official racing circuits, grows determined to investigate the robbery and catch the criminals, no matter what.

Elsewhere in the outskirts of the city, a much-awaited motocross race event is being held at the Circuit Carella, a racing track founded and maintained by Daniel Carella and his family. Daniel is a highly esteemed ex-racer who had won multiple motocross racing championships a number of times in his heyday, and it is in honor of his late wife, Clara, who was also an extremely skilled motorbike rider, that he had built the track. Daniel’s two children, Soelie and Michael, are also racers, and they are the ones who represent their distinguished family in every racing event at present. Although Daniel has a clear bias towards his daughter, Soelie, for he believes that she is the better racer between his two children, the young woman is actually not participating in the current race. Due to some accident in the seemingly recent past, Soelie is unable to ride anymore, and so she tries to prepare her younger brother, Michael, for the upcoming race. 

Although the race is at his home track, quite literally, Michael is clearly intimidated by a few of the other riders, and he feels that their sponsorships and better bikes would pose a daunting challenge for him. Therefore, Michael ultimately finishes 2nd in the race, despite leading for a long time, which evidently upsets Daniel. While Michael and Soelie cannot understand why their father is being so harsh on the racer, despite him having finished 2nd, they soon learn of a serious development. The racing circuit has not been making enough money to keep the family afloat, and the sponsors had already decided to part ways if Michael did not win the race. To make matters worse, the Carella family has accrued a debt of 150,000 euros, because of which the bank wants to foreclose on their racetrack and their house if they do not receive the money in a short time. Thus, in order to hold on to the family’s racing legacy and also to ensure that their parents’ beloved bikes do not have to be sold, Soelie and Michael get involved in a life of crime, making use of their brilliant skills as riders. 

What criminal plan do the siblings get involved in?

Even before Soelie and Michael learn about the financial duress that their family is in, a young man named Yacine comes to meet Michael with a specific job. Yacine is a racer as well, and having trained together for races a couple of times, the two young men have become friends. It is suggested that Michael had often asked Yacine to get him some odd jobs so that he could start earning money on the side and helping out his family, and now there is one such opportunity. When Soelie spots this meeting between the two men, she is not very keen on letting her brother work with someone like Yacine, whom she clearly has some reservations about. However, the job offered to Michael involved just testing a motorcycle and seeing the effects of a few jumps on it, and a tidy sum of 300 euros was being paid as compensation. With the siblings realizing that they now need to be more open to employment opportunities, Soelie agrees to take Michael to the address mentioned by Yacine.

Being the younger child, Michael is not as attached to his family or its legacy just yet, but to Soelie, the financial crisis is a matter of great concern. If Daniel is unable to pay off the bank loan before time, he would not only have to sell off the racing track, which in itself is very close to him and Soelie, but he would also need to get rid of the fantastic collection of motorbikes at his home. This collection was, in fact, started by his wife, Clara, who was also a racer by passion and profession. Along with having love and admiration for her father, Soelie is still very attached to the memory of her mother, whose passing away from cancer some time ago still affects her. When Clara had fallen extremely sick and passed away, all seemingly within a short span of time, Soelie could not believe the cruelty of fate and grew angry at the entire world. In this terribly angry state, she took out one of her mother’s bikes and went for a ride, driving the vehicle in a rash and reckless manner. This is when she met with a horrific accident, which not only made her suffer very serious physical injuries but also traumatized her so terribly that she is no longer able to ride bikes at all. 

Therefore, Soelie wants to preserve and protect her mother’s memories with all her will, because of which she needs money, and needs it quickly. But she also remains wary of what her brother is getting involved in, and so she accompanies him as his personal mechanic to the warehouse where the test is to be conducted. At this warehouse, the siblings get introduced to the exact job at hand, and also the men organizing such an uncommon bike trial. Yacine is basically working with a man named Elyas, who is in charge of the whole operation, and there is a shady vibe about him from the very get-to. Elyas has hired a masterful mechanic named Theo to work on dirtbikes and transform them into scooters, which would be more suited to being driven on city roads. Michael is meant to ride one of these modified bikes and perform a few jumps with it, ensuring that it is fit to be driven for some major event, the nature of which Elyas does not immediately talk about. On the first day of the trial, Michael suggests that more changes be made to the bike, and Soelie agrees to work on the vehicle, despite Theo not wanting to let her do it.

However, the whole situation is interrupted by the arrival of the police at the warehouse, with Lieutenant Lucas Delvo in possession of an arrest warrant for Yacine. The young man tries to escape the law but is eventually caught and dragged to the police station for further questioning. As becomes clear within the next few minutes, Elyas is actually running a gang of robbers, and their modus operandi is using modified bikes and scooters to loot valuable items and then flee the scene. Along with the monetary gains from such raids, the men involved in the gang also take immense pleasure and pride in the fact that the police cannot catch them. The most crucial reason for the gang being out of reach of the police force is that they always operate in a meticulously planned manner. However, Yacine creates problems for all of them when he goes off to rob a civilian all by himself, using the same scooter used in the major heists. The fact that he conducts the robbery during the day and also gets beaten up by the man he tries to rob also ensures that there are a lot of witnesses to the crime, and he is tied to the heist cases because of the scooter. Therefore, the police detective, Delvo, tracks him down and arrests him, before eventually letting him go as well, only with a tracker hidden in his jacket.

Delvo does so because he knows that a grander heist is in the works, and it is for this heist that Elyas hires Michael, and then Soelie as well, when she agrees to work on three scooters and modify them according to the specific needs of the job. The target is a man named Mazetti, who is coming to Paris for a special event named the Crystal Week, which is an exhibition of exquisite pieces of jewelry. During this event, Mazetti will be bringing and presenting a set of red diamonds, which are supremely rare and therefore expensive. Elyas plans to steal these diamonds, not only for the money but also to gain notoriety, and Delvo also figures out that the robbers must be targeting these gems, since stealing jewelry is their specialty. 

How does Soelie get forced into becoming a part of the heist?

Soelie initially does not want to be involved with Elyas in any way, and this is why she turns down his offer to work on his scooters at first. However, when she finds out that her father has already had to sell off most of the bikes in his collection just to give the family some more time to pay back the borrowed money, she decides to take the job. Soelie asks for a hundred thousand euros for her work, and although it shocks Elyas at first, he agrees to pay such a large sum of money for her services because of her skills and the fact that she belongs to a family of racers. The protagonist begins working on the scooters, and in this manner, she becomes close friends with the original mechanic, Theo, as well. Despite Theo initially not liking her, as he felt that she was intruding on his work, he realizes that Soelie is really very skilled, and impressed by her passion, he takes a liking to her. 

Eventually, Elyas’ violent nature is seen when Yacine suddenly arrives at his bike shop, feeling that he will be protected by his fellow gang members. But Elyas is very concerned that the police will track Yacine and find his shop through the reckless acts of the young man. He is already quite irritated with Yacine for having robbed a man by himself and drawing police attention to the whole gang, and so the man decides to ruthlessly punish him. Elyas feels that there is no turning back for Yacine, and so he shoots the young man dead. Both Michael and Soelie are actually at the shop during this time, and Elyas decides to rope both of them into his heist plan since he is now short of one crucial gang member. Although he had gotten Michael to ride the bike at first, he is too shocked after witnessing the murder of his friend and is therefore unfit to participate in any heist. Therefore, Soelie is the only candidate left, and to convince her, Elyas forces Michael to hold the gun he had just used to kill Yacine, so that the young man’s prints are on the murder weapon. He threatens to hand over this gun to the police and lie about Michael having killed Yacine if Soelie does not participate in the heist. The protagonist now has no option but to comply.

Did Soelie save Michael and their family?

The heist is finally executed, and the first part, which involves stealing the red diamonds, goes just as planned. Next, the three robbers have to get away with it, and during this phase, Theo crashes his scooter and has to run from the police on foot. Eventually, Soelie is handed the diamonds, and Elyas drives into Delvo to ensure that the police officer cannot pursue her. A fight breaks out, and although Elyas is able to knock Delvo out, the officer manages to handcuff the criminal right before losing consciousness. Thus, by the time Soelie comes to Elyas with the diamonds, he cannot move and is at the mercy of the protagonist. This is when Soelie reveals that she has turned Theo to her side, and the two of them, along with Michael, have decided to give testimony to the police about Elyas having killed Yacine. The only way that Elyas can avoid such a situation is if he promises to stay away from the lives of the three individuals and to never cause any harm to them. The fact that Soelie does not hand Elyas the keys to the cuffs and throws them into the water instead means that the gangster will be found by the police and will be imprisoned for his crimes. But more importantly, Soelie does not give Elyas the diamonds either, keeping them with herself and seemingly giving Theo a cut of the money she gets from selling them. The rest of the money is used to rescue her family from bankruptcy, ensuring that Circuit Carella remains with the family. 

GTMax ends with scenes from a year after the heist, when another motocross race is being held. Soelie and Michael are both now participating in the race, which is a matter of immense pride for Daniel. Police Lieutenant Delvo also attends the event, and although he knows that Soelie was the third criminal in the gang that carried out the heist, there is no evidence to prove this, and so he just maintains a friendly relation with the Carella family. Theo is also seen attending the race and seemingly watching it from a distance, supporting his friend and possibly girlfriend, Soelie, since he cannot come close to the track because of the police presence. Ultimately, it all works out greatly for Soelie and Michael, and they are able to save their family at the end of GTMax.

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