Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000) : Not So Fast & Furious [Mike’s Review]
Today on Cage Club we go boosting cars to save our brother’s life in “Gone in 60sec”. This is the third film of Nic Cage’s that Jerry Bruckheimer has produced after “The Rock” and “Con Air”, both scoring high on the Cage Club ranking meter. This time thought something feels a little different than those two movies and I can’t quite place my finger on it. The same writer of Con Air is back but we have a new director so that may be the issue here and why things just don’t seem to click the way they should. This movie is also a semi-remake of a great 1974 “stunt-ploitation” car chase film of the same name starring H.B. Halicki and the car known as Eleanor, which is a 1971 Ford Mustang. The remake makes use of the premise, deliver 50 cars in three days. The rest of the movie takes extreme liberties with the plot and mostly creates an entirely new story. I think, with all the star power in this movie, it may have been better to cut the number of cars down to just the most exotic ones and focus on the getaways more than the “boosting” or staling of cars, which quite frankly, isn’t really all that fun and exciting as I felt it could have been. Talk about stars, Cage, Angelina Jolie, Robert Duvall join future stars Timothy Olyphant, Christopher Eccleston, Giovanni Ribisi and Scott Caan just to name a few. Can their presence alone elevate the material into something enjoyable?
The movie stars Cage as Memphis Raines, or is it Randall Raines ? He was once the greatest car their in Long Beach California, some would say the world. He had to retire and lay low because he was bringing on too much heat and becoming a bad influence on his younger brother, Kip. That plan totally backfires because once big brother goes AWOL, Kip tries to step into his shoes and gets mixed up boosting cars for a British maniac that everyone called The Carpenter. The guy is obsessive about making his own furniture but I think the writer called him Carpenter because it starts with “Car” and this is a car movie. Carpenter promised to deliver 50 cars to his buyer and they have three days to finish the order. 50 cars in 3 days, good luck. Memphis has to come out of retirement and do the job that Kip failed at in order to save his life and settle the deal with The “Car”penter. I’m getting a little “Rumble Fish” vibe between Memphis and Kip, like the big brother idolization that Rusty James also felt about Motorcycle Boy. Much like “Ocean’s 11” Memphis has to put together a gang of misfits, each with a particular skill, played by a big actor, to help him pull off the big heist. The move takes an hour getting the band together and scouting the cars, which takes up 2 days movie time. By the time the crew starts boosting cars and actually doing the job there is only 12 hours to steal 50 cars in an hour of movie time left. It seems a little much to me, even with all I’m already giving this movie. I haven’t really mentioned the detectives playing some cat and mouse game with the car gang trying to cause them more trouble, or Master P as the totally useless Bobby O, former rival of Cage. These threads don’t really add to the tension or drama as much as they could and the time may have been spent better getting to know the gang or on really cool car chases/races. My main complaint is that once the actual boosting starts, it’s over really fast. Like the title says, Gone in 60 sec. It only takes them 60sec. to steal a car and the movie doesn’t really convey the tension of that well enough for me. Memphis and the gang pull off the heist and even manage to defeat The Carpenter, saving Kip’s life and the Detective’s life as well in the process. They all rejoice around a BBQ in the end, laughing about how they all just got away with many accounts of Grand Theft Auto as well as multiple other crimes.
I gotta say that this movie is not Fast and the Furious even though there are some insane similarities. F&F just delivers more of what I wanted from a movie boasting fast cars and big action. This movie seems a little more concerned with being cool and dirty gear heads instead of looking nice and clean for the races with their tanned bodies and fresh gear. That is to say, the world of Gone in 60sec is a grittier and dirtier world than the flashy fun neon of the street racing scene. I didn’t exactly need these characters to be clean cut or good looking, but I was expecting everyone to get a good chase scene in at some point. I think that is my major disappointment with Gone in 60sec, it isn’t about racing at all, it’s more about a guy doing a job to save his brother. I guess it just seemed a little misleading to me when the film is about hot cars and crazy stunts but there is only one true chase in the entire movie at the very end. I don’t know how Bruckheimer could let me down this time? I guess you could say, fast and Furious is to Point Break as Gone in 60sec. is to Ocean’s 11 ? I just wish I was having more fun watching this movie.
That will do it for The Fast and Fur… er, I mean Gone in 60sec. In the end, it wasn’t quite as cool as it though it was, but I still enjoy Cage in it and like to see him at the center of attention and playing the leader to a gang like he was Danny Ocean. His place in this movie reminded me a bit of Con Air and how he was surrounded by so many other good actors that could have carried the movie on their own as well.
Next up on Cage Club it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, again. We have our second Cage Christmas movie with “The Family Man”. This is a new twist on some classic Christmas tales told only the way Nic Cage could. Don’t forget to buy rocksalt and walk the dog !
Mike
@the_mikestir
