Gone in 60 seconds (Gone in Sixty Seconds (DVD))

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Product:	Gone in Sixty Seconds (DVD)
Date:	07/06/01 (121 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: action packed

Disadvantages: none

A remake in the Bruckheimer (sans Simpson) style of a minor '70s car theft/chase/crash movie (that was written, directed by and starred H.B. Halicki), this is an identikit of recent big-bucks action pictures still mired in the style Bruckheimer - director Dominic Sena barely registers - 'perfected' in the '80s. It brings back the actors, images, plot devices and editing tricks from such hits as Top Gun (1986) , Days Of Thunder (1990) , The Rock (1996) and Con Air (1997) , but rushes through its rerun without ever really coming to grips with the fact that one car theft is very much like another.

Ribisi, younger brother of retired superthief Cage, fouls up in an especially stupid way working for British nasty Eccleston (a Northern bastard rather than the usual uppercrust thug). In order to persuade the mob boss not to kill his brother, Cage gets back into the criminal life and assembles a team - crusty veteran Duvall, Silent Bob-esque The Sphinx (Vinnie Jones), cuddly black Chi McBride, improbable mechanic/bartender Jolie - to mix with his brother's young krew (Scott Caan, etc) to steal 50 luxury cars in one night.

Patton is a go-between for all the criminal parties on show here, valiantly reprising his Armageddon (1998) act by trying to suggest emotional content where none exists, while outclassed cops Lindo and Olyphant plod along in the stylish crooks' tracks, planning to nail Cage once and for all, despite the fact that in LA, "Nobody cares about auto theft."

Among the gimmicks required to keep the plot going is a dog which swallows crucial car keys, a particular model of classic auto about which Cage has a complex, simmering who-left-whom resentment between the brothers, Eccleston's transparent plan to off everybody anyway (the final face-off takes place in what looks rather like a leftover from the set of James Cameron's Terminator 2), and a traffic blockage that prompts Cage to make an
Evel Knievel leap which would like to be the highlight of the picture.

It's impossible to care about Cage's mission - someone asks someone else whether they ever wonder if stealing cars is wrong, and is fobbed off with a non-answer - on any level: Ribisi is an arsehole who deserves to get crushed, Eccleston a creep who doesn't deserve the cars, and the car-owners are anonymous rich types - rather like the executives who greenlit this film, perhaps? - who presumably deserve to get ripped off. But the music is loud, the editing is fast, the cast is overqualified and the cars... Well, they're just cool.

Summary: