Movie Reviews

Gone in 60 Seconds

29 Jun 2000

Question: When a film is polished, well-paced, and stars three Oscar winners, how stupid could it be? Answer: Gone in 60 Seconds.

This film is dumb with a capital U. Just dumb, mind you. Not completely dreadful. Actors like Nicolas Cage, Robert Duvall and Angelina Jolie give it a style beyond its mentality, as does Dominic Sena's smooth direction and a few moments in Scott Rosenberg's script.

Cage plays Randall "Memphis" Raines, a reformed car thief, forced back into the profession when his brother Kip (Giovanni Ribisi) follows in his footsteps, fouling a job for crimelord Raymond Calitri (Christopher Eccleston). While the Raines brothers are nice crooks, Calitri and his goons are evil crooks, with English accents to prove it. So to save his brother, Memphis must steal 50 sports cars within a few days.

For this caper, he recruits a bunch of his old car-jacking friends. Everyone has now reformed, and it is repeatedly made clear that they don't want to return to crime, but they're doing this one job for Kip. Aw, what sweet bunnies. Nonetheless, the film doesn't deny that ripping off fast cars is an immensely cool line of work.

These people are so cool that they have names like Mirror Man (T.J. Cross) and The Sphinx (Vinnie Jones), and they are attracted to beautiful cars in the same way most of us are attracted to people. And as any movie-goer knows, cars are cool. They explode easily, they make you look sexier, and most importantly, you can have chases in them. In this movie, the inevitable chase goes on for about five hours (at a rough guess) and has a climax so ludicrous that it fits into the film like a glove.

If you want a film that makes any sense, I suggest you see something else. However, if you want the kind of film in which a group of out-of-practice car thieves can steal dozens of cars in the same night, and still outwit an allegedly clever police-detective who has been trailing them for days, I have just the film for you. It's called Gone in 60 Seconds, but unfortunately it lasts a bit longer. Watch it for the popcorn.