Gone In Sixty Seconds (2000)

Remakes of old crime caper films as big budget Hollywood blockbusters can be successful – see Ocean’s Eleven for an example – but it can also lead to unimaginative pointless movies like this remake of a 1970s car-theft movie of the same name.

Memphis Raines (Nicholas Cage) is a master car-thief who retired from his life crime to stop his brother Kip (Giovanni Ribisi) from following in his footsteps. Unfortunately his enforced exile teaching kids how to go-kart didn’t have the desired effect and Kip grows up to take on the family profession of stealing fast, expensive automobiles. After a police raid leads to several of their cars being impounded, Kip finds himself unable to deliver the cars he promised to the sinister local crime boss Raymond Calitri (Christopher Eccleston), who proceeds to taunt him mercilessly with his eccentricity. The end result is that Cage needs to steal the cars his brother failed to steal, or else his brother dies. It is quite a daunting task – fifty cars in one night - but most of the thefts are simple enough that the filmmakers had to resort to some desperately unimaginative plot points to fill out this movie. A dog eating some important car keys is a particularly dire moment in the script.

This is a film that manages to be entertaining enough to be watchable but there is a chronic lack of anything interesting happening. There is also an almost unforgivable lack of action scenes – it is a perfect set-up for lots of car chases but there is only one major chase in the entire film. The dialogue can be quite bad at times and there is barely a hint of character development. In fact most of the cast apart from Cage and Ribisi might as well have not bothered turning up, there’s so little for them to do.

Nicholas Cage can produce good acting performances (see “Adaptation”, for example) but here he is on action-movie autopilot and seems liable to fall asleep at any moment. Eccleston fails miserably to be threatening and Ribisi produces a bland performance. The talented Robert Duvall is totally wasted here in a minor role as Raines’ mentor while Angelina Jolie is given even less to do as the token love interest. There are some decent performances in the supporting roles from Delroy Lindo as Raines’ nemesis in the police force, and Chi McBride as Raines’ accomplice. Vinnie Jones is cast as a mute, which save his from having to utter the awful dialogue and manages to pull off the feat of being the only convincing criminal in this film.

The cars look nice, the climatic car chase is moderately impressive and the soundtrack is quite good but that about exhausts the list of good points.

In summary, not a bad film but an extremely underwhelming and forgettable one. It is moderately entertaining but that’s the best praise it can get.

Rating : 6 / 10

All content ©2003 William Marnoch.

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