Lady Eleanor (Gone in Sixty Seconds (DVD))

Member Name: dave27

Product:	Gone in Sixty Seconds (DVD)
Date:	03/02/02 (98 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cage, Ecclestone

Disadvantages: If you don't like cars

If you've not seen the film then the title will mean nothing to you - if you've seen the film then you're unlikely to be reading this review - so what's the point, you may well ask ... well, the point is that dave27 moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform...

Deeply wonderful are the ways of the dave27 muse, as deeply wonderful indeed as Man's desperate fascination for the automobile...

Gone In 60 Seconds is about Man's obsession with cars to the exclusion of just about everything else ... and it is wonderful, vibrant stuff, totally entrancing from first moment to last.

Nicholas Cage is the cool dude outlaw hero, Memphis/Randall Rains, a reformed car thief who is 'persuaded' back to his old ways when a good old British psychopathic villain (played enthusiastically and wholeheartedly nastily by Christopher Ecclestone) threatens to bump off his brother unless he does him a favour...

And the favour? Quite simple really, just steal 50 exotic and very rare cars within the space of four days for a job lot order. For that Rains gets his brother and 200,000 big ones (or dollars even).

Rains, of course, pulls together his very own version of the League of Gentlemen, made up partly of refugees from The Lost Boys, partly of old time acquaintances and partly of the dreadlocks and large chest of Angelina Jolie (blondely untainted as yet by the enormous mammarial obsessions of Lara Croft).

It's a mad, manic, thrusting race against time with you rooting with all your fibre for the bad guy turned good turned bad again.


Cage and Ecclestone are first rate, while Jolie is steadfastly smouldering as the only real example of the female race on show here. She's masculinely adorable, a harder than hard woman in a terribly male world, with only the steel skulled Vinnie Jones out-thugging her as the apparently mute Sphinx. It's rip roaringly exciting and addictive stuf
f and well worth 90 minutes of anybody's time. I've waited a long time to see it but stoutly resisted the temptation of getting it via Sky Box Office, but dinnae fret it would be worth the money...

You get a bit of a detective movie, a bit of a chase, a bit of a gangster movie, a few decent laughs, a lot of excellent acting, and an awful lot of cars, cars, cars, cars, cars and CARS... you also get Robert Duvall in support and a great set of ensemble playing as things build pacily to a rip roaring and totally nail biting conclusion. It's got an unusually high number of English interjections with Ecclestone and his gang of hard bitten Cockney thugs providing the heaviest muscle and completely eclipsing the American version, which is provided by rival gangs of car thieves.

The car thefts are depicted with astonishing realism and it makes you realise exactly how vulnerable your own set of wheels is ... still, who in their right mind would want a Renault Megane Scenic when they can have a Ferrari or a Rolls, like Nick sets his sights on?

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