Good fun (Gone in Sixty Seconds (DVD))

Member Name: defiler

Product:	Gone in Sixty Seconds (DVD)
Date:	31/03/01 (26 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lots of car chases, good mindless action

Disadvantages: Lack of depth to characters, unconvincing parts of the story

Gone in 60 seconds is a great fun, provided you switch off your mind while watching it. This is a good action movie that, while not really bringing anything new to the genre, is entertaining and fun to watch.

I think the fact that I'm writing this opinion within about 15 minutes of watching the film shows my addiction to dooyoo, although I'll just use the excuse that I want to keep the film fresh in my mind so I don't forget anything (anyone really convinced with this explanation? :).

The film starts with a car theft and that's pretty much all that happens throughout the film, giving lots of excuses for great car chases and other action scenes, however to be honest there isn't too much else in the film. The basic plot is that "Memphis" Raines (Nicholas Cage) is a legendary car thief, now retired. In order to prevent his brother following in his footsteps he left town and started a new life, however this didn't really help much as his brother decides to follow a similar life anyway. When his brother seriously messes up a car theft, Memphis is forced to return to the town to save his life, in order to do this he needs to steal 50 cars in just 3 days.

In order to do this he stars to gather a team to help him, however soon finds out that a lot of the people who used to help him have either died or retired. With the people who do agree to help him (almost all of whom seem to come back from retirement just for this) and people that his brother knows, he starts work on preparing a plan to steal the cars. To be fair, I've seen much worse plots in movies, however I'd never say this is amazing and seems just an excuse for lots of car chases really.

The acting is generally good, while nothing special. I enjoyed almost all of the acting in the film and never found anything too unconvincing, although I also wasn't amazed at it.
Nicholas Cage (The Rock, Leaving Las Vegas) stars in the
film as Randall "Memphis" Raines, however his character seems to be the only one that has any depth to it and even then not that much. You do get a feeling as to why he is doing what he does, however he seems to agree to everything much too easily to be convincing of his character. While he plays the role convincingly he doesn't quite live up to previous roles, such as in The Rock. Angeline Jolie (Girl Interrupted, The Bone Collector) doesn't really seem to bring that much to the film, while her perfomance is good, the character seems to lack depth and seems to only have been added so that there was at least 1 female character in the film.
The film also stars Robert Duvall (Deep Impact, Phenomenon), Giovanni Ribisi (Saving Private Ryan, The Mov Squad) and Vinnie Jones (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch). While Giovanni Ribisi wasn't that great a character, playing Raines kid brother and seemed very shallow throughout most of the movie, Vinnie Jones surprised me by providing a character that was probably one of the most amusing in the film, although you'll have no idea who he is or why he's there at all.

I would say the main problem is the lack of depth to characters, Vinnie Jones' character for example is never really explained as to why he is there at all, what he normally does (except very basically) or anything at all. Other characters suffer similar problems, with you never really knowing why they are there or why they are doing what they do. However, like I said earlier, switch your mind off while watching and you'll enjoy the film even so.

The film doesn't really bring anything new to the action genre, it's a fun movie however most of the scenes seem to have been done in one way or another before. However this is probably because it's hard to think of new imaginative ideas for a film and just because a scene has been done before doesn't mean it can't be changed a
nd watched again in a different way. The film is fun to watch provided you don't expect anything particularly new about it.

There are various elements to the film that don't make too much sense if you think about them, which is the best reason for switching off your mind while watching. For example, they always seem to drive to the cars they want to steal, yet seem unconcerned about leaving these cars there. Either they stole an extra car just to drive to each car they were wanting to steal, or they were unconcerned about wasting an awful lot of money. Another thing that didn't make too much sense was the fact that in carrying out the thefts they angered another group of people who then wanted them dead, considering the punishment for not doing the thefts in the first place was also death, doing the thefts seems to have no point.

However, the point of the film isn't to think too much about it, it's to watch a lot of good fun action scenes and just enjoy the movie. If you can switch off your mind while watching and enjoy a good action film then this is a film well worth watching, however if you need more depth to a movie you should definetely look elsewhere.

Summary: