June
9, 2000 | At once dizzyingly chaotic and dismally lackluster, Gone
in 60 Seconds is a slam-bang blur of flashy technique and flaunty
attitude that goes nowhere fast. Despite the insistent efforts of director
Dominic Sena (Kalifornia) to intensify each scene with rapid-fire
editing, near-surreal color schemes and a wall-to-wall, rave-all-night
pop-rock soundtrack, this latest eruption of sound and fury engineered
by producer Jerry Bruckheimer (Armageddon) spends far too much
time spinning its wheels. It's almost as though, after expending all
their energy on the stuff showcased in the action-packed, attention-grabbing
coming-attractions trailer, Sena and his actors simply were too exhausted,
mentally and physically, to do anything but go through the motions while
completing the picture.
Even
Nicolas Cage, an actor notorious for his ability to hotwire a routine
action flick and zip into subversive, self-satirical excess, seems subdued,
if not downright bored. Except for a few flashes of his trademark ersatz-Elvis
swagger, and a fleeting imposture of a flamboyantly fussy customer in
a Porsche dealership, Cage's performance registers as the work of a
gifted but indolent actor on automatic pilot.
Cage
stars as Randall "Memphis" Raines," an L.A. car thief
so boldly efficient that, when he retired, Southern California posted
a 47 percent drop in reports of auto theft. Memphis became a model citizen
- the operator of a go-kart track, no less - at the urging of his long-suffering
mother (Grace Zabriskie), who feared that Memphis' younger brother,
Kip (the ineffably creepy Giovanni Ribisi), might follow in his footsteps.
Six years later, however, Kip has gone ahead and launched a criminal
career anyway.
Unfortunately,
Kip isn't a very good car thief. Even more unfortunately, he botches
an assignment for a most unforgiving client: Raymond Calitri (Christopher
Eccleston of Elizabeth), a malevolent piece of Eurotrash who
rashly assumed Kip could steal 50 collector-worthy cars within a tight
time frame. Calitri plans to toss Kip's own car into an auto compactor
-- while Kip remains handcuffed to the steering wheel - unless Memphis
comes out of retirement to snatch the 50 vehicles within an even tighter
time frame. Like, three days.
Memphis
devotes the better part of 72 hours to locating and recruiting former
partners in crime. First, he enlists the aid of ex-mentor Otto Halliwell
(Robert Duvall), a former chop-shop master gone semi-legit. Then, to
give the movie at least some semblance of a romantic subplot, Memphis
calls upon Sara "Sway" Wayland (Angelina Jolie), his one-time
accomplice and sometime girlfriend, who poses a provocative question:
What's more of a turn-on, boosting cars or making love? Such is Memphis'
dedication to his craft that he must seriously ponder the alternatives
before responding.
After
gathering a few more co-conspirators - including a hulking mute played
by ex-footballer Vinnie Jones of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
- Memphis gets down to the business of planning and launching a dusk-to-dawn
marathon of auto thievery. Trouble is, nothing terribly interesting
happens during all this preparation. A troublesome cop (Delroy Lindo,
picking up an easy paycheck) drops by to ask pointed questions, a rival
car thief makes some noise about protecting his turf, and that's about
it. The audience is led to expect a pay-off of shoot-the-moon excitement
after so much repetitious exposition. But the movie stints on pulse-pounding
spectacle, and provides only the unsatisfying catharsis of a climax
that has Memphis racing a stolen 1967 Shelby Mustang while pursued by
cop cars and a helicopter.
The
singular lack of cheap thrills is all the more surprising when you consider
Gone in 60 Seconds is a big-budget, star-studded retread of a
no-budget, high-concept 1974 drive-in quickie that attained cult status
by wrecking 90 cars in a 40-minute chase scene. For reasons not entirely
clear, the makers of the remake have tried to cobble together a more
character-driven movie, which is always a big mistake when you're dealing
with such low-mileage dramatis personae. Indeed, the characters
in Scott Rosenberg's screenplay are so thin, they are defined almost
entirely by the actors portraying them.
Duvall
is such a sly old pro that, even with a minimum of dialogue, he's able
to convince you that he's playing a human being, not a plot device.
Better still, he manages to develop a believable on-screen rapport with
Cage. Maybe, when the cameras weren't running, these two guys bonded
by swapping stories about slumming for fun and profit after earning
an Oscar as Best Actor.
Jolie,
another Academy Award winner, wears garish dreadlocks to convey her
character's eccentricity. Even so, that's not enough to make her performance
at all memorable. To be fair, though, she doesn't have much screen time
to make much of an impression. She inexplicably disappears for long
periods throughout Gone in 60 Sixty Seconds. And whenever she
does return, you half-expect Cage or some other actor to stop what he's
doing and say something like, "Excuse me, but do I know... Oh,
yeah, now I remember. You're in this picture, too."