GONE IN 60 SECONDS (2000) / * 1/2
Directed by Dominic Sena. Screenplay by Scott Rosenberg. Starring Nicolas Cage, Giovanni Ribisi, Delroy Lindo. Running time: 121 minutes. Rated AA by the MFCB. Reviewed on June 11th, 2000.
By SHANNON PATRICK SULLIVAN
Movies like "Gone In 60 Seconds" boggle my mind. Here we have a cast of Academy Award-winning actors. We have a scenario that promises lots of high-octane action and excitement. We have a screenplay written by Scott Rosenberg, who penned the entertaining "Con Air". We have that film's producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, who has also overseen such thrilling fare as "The Rock", "Crimson Tide" and "Beverly Hills Cop" (although, it should be noted, also masterminded that most gratuitous waste of celluloid, "Armageddon"). And yet despite these promising ingredients, we have a movie that just doesn't deliver. "Gone In 60 Seconds" feels like it can barely get out of neutral, let alone shift into high gear.
Nicolas Cage plays "Memphis" Raines, formerly California's best car thief and now retired to run a gas station and go-kart track. Unbeknownst to Memphis, his brother Kip (Giovanni Ribisi) has followed in his footsteps and is trying to make his own name boosting autos. But Kip messes up one night while on the job for Raymond Calitri (Christopher Eccleston), who took over when Memphis left town. Contacting Memphis, Calitri informs him that he needs to steal fifty rare cars in the space of four days, or Kip will be killed.
Reluctantly agreeing to reenter his old profession, Memphis starts getting back in touch with members of his old gang, including mentor Otto (Robert Duvall) and ex-girlfriend Sway (Angelina Jolie); Kip brings along his own young accomplices to fill out the ranks. But by the time the team has been assembled and the reconnaissance carried out, only twenty-four hours remain before Calitri's deadline, forcing Memphis and his friends to boost the fifty cars in a single night. And to add to their troubles, they must contend with veteran cop Roland Castlebeck (Delroy Lindo), who missed his chance to nab Memphis once, and does not intend to let it pass him by again.
"Gone In 60 Seconds" is based loosely on the popular 1974 drive-in feature by HB Halicki, and I headed into the theatre expecting one of those movies which sacrificed plot and characterisation in favour of relentless excitement. I was half right: there's not much plot and not much characterisation, but it takes an hour and a half before the film even starts trying to get the adrenalin pumping.
The big problem with the movie is that it feels like it was made from the first draft of the script rather than the final version. Rosenberg's storytelling is extremely clumsy. After a mildly entertaining opening bit, we are sucked into a dull and overlong middle section in which Memphis brings together his team, checks out the cars, and reencounters old sparring partner Castlebeck. Not only is all this extremely tedious, it feels almost unnecessary. Rosenberg is obviously trying to give each of the players a distinctive personality but lacks the skill to do so, and would have been better off spotlighting just a handful. The result is that Memphis' team consists of a dozen people all with minimal characterisation, and none of whom we end up caring very much about.
This is particularly unfortunate because it means that some very talented actors like Duvall, Ribisi and Jolie are pretty much wasted in roles that struggle for screen time. Duvall, for example, is consigned to standing around a warehouse most of the time. Jolie appears just long enough to remind us of the tremendous charisma she brings to any role, and make us wish her part was more significant. Eccleston, as the malevolent Calitri, seems like he could have been a delightfully cartoonish sort of villain, but appears only briefly, in the film's first and last half hours. Cage, meanwhile, seems to be on autopilot as Memphis; he does what he can with the paltry material, but there is no real enthusiasm to the performance. Cage lowers himself to the standards of the script, rather than trying to bring it up to his own level.
Examples of these low standards litter "Gone In 60 Seconds". There are some sequences which are so contrived, and feel so obviously shoehorned into the plot, that I found myself shaking my head in the theatre. For example, late in the film, one of Kip's friends -- a computer wizard who usually stays behind a laptop rather than heading out into the field -- suddenly demands to go on a heist. That he nearly screws everything up should come as a surprise to no one. Rosenberg's dialogue also verges on the excruciating at several points; Calitri is described as coming after Kip "like stains on a mattress", for instance.
"Gone In 60 Seconds" finally gets moving when after an hour and a half -- gasp, shock -- we finally get some car chases. These are undeniably engrossing, although I was disappointed that they weren't a little more inventive. Certainly, they are inferior to such memorable chase sequences as, say, Gene Hackman's in "The French Connection". They are also somewhat hamstrung by Dominic Sena's otherwise competent direction. More than once, Sena is unable to keep the depiction of the car chases fluid and coherent, and this difficulty in following the action works against its entertainment value.
But perhaps the worst thing that can be said about the car chases is that they lead up to the film's routine, lacklustre and faintly ludicrous conclusion. It is here that the laziness of Rosenberg's script is most evident, giving us an ending which not only steals from every other B-grade action movie, but also totally dismisses one of his principals' established characterisation.
As mindless summer entertainment, "Gone In 60 Seconds" isn't bad, but even the most avid action fan is likely to be turned off by the movie's lethargic pacing. Compared to the film's two hour running time, the twenty minutes or so of car chases seems paltry, given that the anticipation of these scenes is the movie's main selling point. "Gone In 60 Seconds" will make you wish you'd been gone from the theatre in a lot less than 119 minutes.
Copyright © 2000 Shannon Patrick Sullivan. Archived at The Popcorn Gallery, http://www.physics.mun.ca/~sps/movies/GoneIn60Seconds.html
_______________________________________________________________________ / Shannon Patrick Sullivan | "We are all in the gutter, but some of us \ | shannon@mun.ca | are looking at the stars." - Oscar Wilde | \___________________________|__________________________________________/ | Popcorn Gallery Movie Reviews www.physics.mun.ca/~sps/movies.html | | Doctor Who: A Brief History of Time (Travel) /drwho.html |
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