Overall Rating
  Awesome: 24.34%
Worth A Look: 17.99%
Average: 17.99%
Pretty Bad: 25.93%
Total Crap: 13.76%
11 reviews, 123 user ratings
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| Gone in 60 Seconds (2000) |
by Rob Gonsalves
"Critics had no use for it, but it's fun enough."
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Both the ad campaign and the opening credits for 'Gone in 60 Seconds' come on very hip, very techno, very 2000. The film itself, though, is comfortably cheesy -- a real beer-and-pizza movie.In spirit, I imagine it's close to the original Gone in 60 Seconds (which I haven't seen), a 1974 drive-in flick considered a cult classic by B-movie buffs. The new film gives us reasonably likable characters, gives them a clearly defined conflict, and gets out of the way as they go about resolving it. There's not one scrap of art in Gone in 60 Seconds, but there's no flab either; in its pedal-to-the-metal professionalism, it's almost a lowbrow version of Ronin.
Perhaps only in recent years could two Oscar winners (Nicolas Cage and Angelina Jolie) appear, without apparent irony or disdain, in a megabudget action movie produced by Jerry Bruckheimer (Con Air, Armageddon). Or perhaps not -- perhaps this film is a '70s throwback in more ways than one: remember the Oscar winners peppered throughout The Swarm and The Poseidon Adventure? (Both were produced by Irwin Allen, the Jerry Bruckheimer of the '70s.) In any event, Cage and Jolie seem to be having fun, and Jolie in particular likes to tease her generally bland lines as if playing with chewing gum. She's a whiz at keeping herself amused; I have a feeling she'll be a wild card in movies for years to come.
Cage is in penitent-nice-guy mode as Randall "Memphis" Raines, a former car thief who's been out of the racket eight years. Memphis is happy enough working in a garage and supervising a kiddie race track, but just when he thought he was out, they pull him back in. It seems his kid brother Kip (Giovanni Ribisi, looking like Shaggy), himself a budding car thief, has gotten in hot water with a vicious ganglord known as "the Carpenter." This criminal mastermind is given such a dread-ridden build-up that part of the movie's oddball charm is that he turns out to be Christopher Eccleston, who could possibly frighten a cup of tea, if that.
The Carpenter (screenwriter Scott Rosenberg does love these baroque names for gangsters) offers Memphis a deal: Steal and deliver 50 fancy cars, and Kip can stay among the breathing. So Memphis swiftly puts together a crew, including his old flame Sway (Jolie), his mentor Otto (Robert Duvall), old friend Donny (the scene-stealing Chi McBride), and the wordless Sphinx (Vinnie Jones). The cars that have been targeted for theft are all given female names, and the many heist scenes have the ardent, furtive quality of romance; Memphis slips into a beauty, hot-wires her, and revs her up. When Sway gets into the action, it's almost a Sapphic love scene.
Writing about An Officer and a Gentleman, Pauline Kael called it "crap, but it's crap on a motorcycle." Well, Gone in 60 Seconds is crap in a Shelby Mustang GT 500. The movie was directed by Dominic Sena, an MTV veteran whose only previous film was 1993's Kalifornia, a sun-bleached serial-killer thriller with David Duchovny and Brad Pitt; the only link I can find between the two films is that they're both a lot better than they had to be. Partly it's thanks to Scott Rosenberg, the quirky scripter (Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead) who has worked for Bruckheimer before (Con Air and, uncredited, Armageddon). Here, Rosenberg finds the right balance between action-propelled narrative and odd touches, such as a comic-relief cop duo (determined Delroy Lindo and goofy Timothy Olyphant). The movie also pauses to let a minor character sing the praises of an unprintable technique known as "the Stranger"; I respect a film that stops to smell the sleaze.
In all, this is the first Bruckheimer production I've enjoyed. I only regret a little too much camera jitter in the car-chase scenes, which are otherwise staged with a tongue-in-cheek taste for the ridiculous (Memphis gets behind the wheel of that Shelby Mustang and makes her defy gravity, physics, and Delroy Lindo). What amazes me is that many critics are praising the bloated Mission: Impossible 2 while dumping on this light-headed, light-hearted fare, as if punishing Bruckheimer for past cinematic sins.Maybe Bruckheimer hasn't quite reformed, unlike Memphis, but 'Gone in 60 Seconds' at least shows that he can make entertaining trash, instead of his usual boring trash.
link directly to this review at https://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=1808&reviewer=416
originally posted: 01/24/07 12:51:58
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USA
09-Jun-2000 (PG-13)
DVD: 07-Jun-2005
UK
N/A
Australia
29-Jun-2000 (M)
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