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Gone in Sixty Seconds
**1/2
Rated on a 4-star
scale
Screening venue: Odeon (Liverpool City Centre)
Released in the UK by Buena Vista on August 4, 2000; certificate 15; 118
minutes; country of origin USA; aspect ratio 2.35:1
Directed by Dominic Sena; produced by
Jerry Bruckheimer, Mike Stenson.
Written by Scott Rosenberg; based on the 1974 motion picture "Gone
in 60 Seconds".
Photographed by Paul Cameron; edited by Chris Lebenzon, Tom
Muldoon.
CAST.....
Nicolas Cage..... Randall 'Memphis' Raines
Angelina Jolie..... Sara 'Sway' Wayland
Giovanni Ribisi..... Kip Raines
Delroy Lindo..... Detective Roland Castlebeck
Will Patton..... Ashley Jackson
Christopher Eccleston..... Raymond Calitri
Chi McBride..... Donny Astricky
Robert Duvall..... Otto Halliwell
Vinnie Jones..... The Sphinx
In the corner of the "Gone in Sixty
Seconds" poster, there is an offer to "Win a Car!" If the producers
of this grand theft auto movie had more of a sense of fun, it would read
"Steal a Car!" This is an expensive summer action flick. People will go expecting
a brainless good time. It's easy to watch, for sure, and sporadically amusing,
but it's not exciting, it has no gusto, and nothing much really
happens.
Nicolas Cage stars as Randall 'Memphis' Raines,
a retired car thief forced to get back into the life of crime for one weekend
after his younger brother Kip (Giovanni Ribisi) screws up an assignment for
a dangerous gangster named Raymond Calitri (Christopher Eccleston). Calitri's
name sounds Italian to me, but he's from Britain. Cage doesn't have time
to worry about that, though; he has to regroup his old gang and steal fifty
rare cars for the mobster in four days. Otherwise, Kip's dead.
The antiheroic team include Cage, Angelina Jolie,
Robert Duvall and Vinnie Jones. They plan a search and capture mission for
the required vehicles, they get them without much hassle, there's a violent
showdown with Calitri, and that's the movie. A subplot involving Delroy Lindo
as a cop with an old score to settle with Cage doesn't lead anywhere except
a cute reconciliation, and so there's no dramatic tension involved. The appeal
of the film is supposed to lie in simply watching a bunch of sexy actors
drive cool cars. There's only one big chase, there's hardly any violence,
and there's certainly no grand depth.
Am I missing something here? The trailer for "Gone
in Sixty Seconds" had more energy than the actual film, due to fast cutting
and excited focus on one-liners. But that lasted two minutes. The picture
itself lasts for two hours, and so finds it a bit harder to gloss over the
lack of substance. The director, Dominic Sena, and producer, Jerry Bruckheimer,
are accomplished action filmmakers, and do an admirable job at pulling off
the con trick. I'm giving the movie a respectable two-and-a-half stars out
of four, because I found it nice to sit and relax for awhile, watching attractive
performers and slick photography. "Gone in Sixty Seconds" hums along with
so much ease that we almost don't notice nothing's happening.
Almost.
The original "Gone in 60 Seconds" (1974) was directed
by stunt king W.B. Halicki, and has become legendary as a big automotive
smash-up picture. Couldn't we have had more of those onscreen antics in this
version? Granted, it wouldn't have been as exciting as Halicki's effort,
because we'd know that big budgets and tight safety procedures would have
been involved, but at least we'd have more to feast our eyes on. Let me say
it again, for boys and girls in the audience who didn't get it the first
time: Hardly anything happens in this movie. The protagonists need to nab
some cars, they get 'em, they go home. So what?
It's just a mechanical exercise in looking at
machinery, designed for pre-pubescent boys. I used to have a car fascination
when I was six years old. I would have loved this movie -- especially on
television, so I could have played Trump Cards with my mates in between glances
at the screen. The film's attitude to sex is incredible -- the only time
anyone gets kit off is when Cage and Jolie are parked outside an apartment,
and the camera peeks inside it to see the early stages of a couple getting
hot and heavy. Cage and Jolie drive off, and the camera goes with them, but
only after one last glimpse. I kept picturing a kid looking in that same
window, giggling out the word "Cool!" before running away. As for humour,
there's a running joke about how Jones's character never speaks, so in the
final scene he lets rip a stilted barrage of pseudo-Shakespearean wisdom.
Ho, ho, ho.
COPYRIGHT© 2000 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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