The powerhouse producing duo of Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson undeniably changed the face of Hollywood during the 1980s by giving it an unfeasibly glossy sheen and giving such names as Tom Cruise, Eddie Murphy, Tony Scott and Adrian Lyne the platform to do some really flashy shit. However, for me personally, I’ve always been in awe of the string of muscular, sun-kissed action/thrillers that Bruckheimer released during the 90s after Simpson checked out to the coke-fueled orgy in the sky. Starting with with Bad Boys and Crimson Tide in 1995 and rapidly gaining momentum with the likes of The Rock, Con Air, Armageddon and Enemy Of The State, it was a near unbroken run of spectacular awesomeness that lassoed in impressive casts and practically cemented the name of Michael Bay overnight as a director who could get shit done – and then blow it up. However, by 2000, it seemed like the formula was going off the boil and with the release of a glitzy remake of 70s cult car-smasher, Gone In 60 Seconds, it was fairly apparent that an era of bombast was about to stall…
Randall “Memphis” Raines is a legendary car thief who skipped town years earlier in a bid to go straight and thus save his little brother Kip, from going down the same path. However, when he gets word that Kip not only followed in his footsteps anyway, but has gotten in deep with vicious British criminal, Raymond Calitri, Memphis returns to Long Beach California to try and figure out the dept owed. Of course, Calitri isn’t exactly one of those rational mob bosses that you never hear about and he makes it clear that if Memphis wants to get his brother out of the swamp of shit he’s inadvertently waded into, he’s going to have to fill the order that Kip flunked.
That means that if the Raines brother want to be free and clear, they’re going to have to somehow steal a hefty 50 cars in 72 hour and each one has to exactly match what Calitri has on his list. To pull off this herculean feat of grand theft auto, Memphis starts making calls in order to merge his old gang of lunatic misfits with Kip’s young gang of lunatic misfits to get the manpower needed to tick off that gargantuan wishlist. Featuring such names as Sway, Tumbler and The Sphinx, this assorted crew of colourful oddballs decent upon Long Beach to get there task done and keep Kip breathing, but tailgating them like an octogenarian driver is Detective Roland Castlebeck who has hoping to nail Memphis after he skipped town last time.
At time ticks by and the list gradually shrinks, there seems to be a chance that these outlaw weirdos may actually pull this caper off, but last on the list is “Elenor” a nickname given to a particular make of car that has proven to be Memphis’ undoing time and time again. But with so much on the line, will Memphis’ white whale – a 1967 Ford Shelby GT500 that shines like it’s made of mithril – bring his quest to a screeching halt?
On paper, Gone In 60 Seconds should have been a home run. Not only does it ensnare a whole host of character actors who either had previous experience with Simpson & Bruckheimer (Nic Cage, Will Patton, Robert Duvall) and upcoming talent (Angelina Jolie, Giovanni Ribisi, um… Vinnie Jones?), but it also boasted a typically eccentric script from Con Air scribe Scott Rosenberg that dutifully delivers a metric ton of kooky, colour, characters each armed with a near unlimited stream of killer zingers and a bunch of cars filmed so seductively, Michael Bay would assuredly want to fuck them. Holding this bombastic circus together was director Dominic Sena who would go one to become slightly famous for showing us Halle Berry’s boobs and giving us that kickass bullet-time explosion in Swordfish, but while he seemingly had an embarrassment of riches at his command, Gone In 60 Seconds just can’t seem to pull itself together to match the dizzying heights of Bruckheimer’s previous actiony output. It’s a crying shame, but the exact things that made stuff like The Rock and Con Air work is that there was a clear, simple directive that cut clean through the noise and shrapnel that demanded that no matter what crazy shit occurs, it has to be fun – critically, it’s the one thing that the movie forgets to do.
It doesn’t help that literally everything in this movie is dialled all the way up to eleven whether it requires it or not. Memphis is less a recognisable human being and more of a collection of Nicolas Cage acting tics made flesh and topped off with bleached hair and the rest of the cast follow his lead by trying to unsuccessfully out-quirk the cast of Con Air thanks to Rosenberg doubling down on the cartoonish charactization.
Vinnie Jones plays a mute mortician, Angelina Jolie has nothing much more to do than smile devilish from under a mop of blonde dreadlocks, Robert Duvall adds some pomp to his craggy mentor thing, Giovanni Ribisi is… very Giovanni Ribisi – you get the idea. However, despite everyone presumably being pushed to go as far as they possibly can performance wise, it’s a little worrying that the only thing that Cage actually has any chemistry with is Eleanor, who is, of course, a car.
In it’s own way, it’s fun watching everyone given free reign to make their panto-level scumbags endearing characters (obviously they only steal cars from rich pricks) and the Bruckheimer levels of gloss work wonders, but the fact that none of it seems to gel just leaves you waiting for things to kick off when they never actually do. It’s fairly funny, sort of exciting, but hardly gripping and more than once during the film you’ll find yourself wondering why there doesn’t seem to be any car chases in this car chase movie as everyone is working overtime to help the movie bury the needle on the quirk-o-meter. Worse yet, when we do finally get to the big finish that sees Memphis and Eleanor try to avoid an entire police force, the fucking thing ends with a blatently CGI car jump which may not seem so bad now in the age of Fast & Furious, but in 2000, it seemed blasphemous.
While it admittedly plays better than it did 24 years ago and it has some genuinely good moments (the pre-heist zen moment set to War’s “Low Rider” is an all-timer), a grossly miscast Christopher Eccleston as a furniture obsessed gang boss and Sena’s inability to do much more than ape Michael Bay’s shooting style means that Gone In 60 Seconds is mostly stuck in a wheel spin when it should be tearing up the tarmac with reckless abandon.
Essentially marking the last of Bruckheimer’s unsubtle action phase before he moved onto Pirates Of The Caribbean movies, what should have been a lab of honor instead sits stalled at the traffic lights with a flooded engine. It’s colourful, it’s certainly loud but with all the autoerotic car worshiping aside, the filmmaker’s best efforts can’t prevent this film from being the cinematic equivalent of having your car keyed by punks.
Forgotten in 60 seconds.
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