Gone in 60 Seconds (2000)
Grade: D+
Cast: Nicholas Cage, Giovanni Ribisi, Angelina Jolie, Delroy Lindo, Christopher Eccleston, Will Patton, Robert Duvall
Director: Dominic Sena
Rated PG-13 for violence, language, sexual innuendo

"Gone In 60 Seconds" isn’t about the following: story, acting, plot, script, direction, sex, violence, direction, or chicks. It’s about cars. Not just any cars though---those “sweet/awesome” cars 11 year olds lust over, probably caused in part by all those flashy car commercials. I’m not one of those people…never was and probably never will be. Thus "Gone In 60 Seconds" very rarely wowed me in that category.

Here’s the plot, which sets up lots of shots of sweet/awesome cars: retired car thief Randall “Memphis” Raines (I assume that’s a nickname---he’s addressed by both in the course of two hours), played by Nicholas Cage, is a legend. His mom asked him to retire so his brother Kip (Giovanni Ribisi) wouldn’t follow the same route, although you would think it would also be because having a son as a car thief isn’t something to brag about to the Euchre Club.

Anyways, Kip becomes a car thief despite Memphis’ retirement, and an unsuccessful boost lands him in trouble with some jerk named Raymond Calitri (Christopher Eccleston), who threatens to kill him if Memphis can’t steal 50 specific cars in 72 hours. Of course, much of this time is spent recruiting people to help him out, who are inevitably colorful and quirky. See, all of Memphis’ friends are car thieves, but he only gets two to help out: his ex-girlfriend Sway (Angelina Jolie) and a mute. Meanwhile, he is being watched by a cop (Delroy Lindo)…did he ever think to tell the cop about Raymond? No, but nevermind; Memphis gets a sort of sexual urge in stealing cars…he even names them [all female names, which supports my theory wonderfully]. This is the first half of the movie, and by this time we have about 24 hours left.

What a waste of time. We spent half of the movie getting acquainted with insignificant characters, and then get an hour of what is supposed to be, I guess, exciting action. The action however, is never as good as it could have been, and therefore can’t redeem itself from the pretentious first half of the movie. We get some nice sequences, a criminally underused but still sexy Angelina Jolie, and that’s about it. The nice sequences are fairly cool, I guess, but they almost always have some sort of factor that keeps them from being as interesting as they might be.

I happened to love the huge car jump over a row of other cars, but it isn’t so well done that I suspended my disbelief for even the whole scene. Other than that, there is an amusing scene involving a snake in a car, and some humorous sex and car analogies. That’s about it, folks. "Gone In 60 Seconds" is supposed to be an edge-of-your-seat action thriller, but it plays like a very long car commercial with big-name actors. Car commercials don’t thrill me, and neither did this. There was not an action sequence in the film that completely grabbed me, and I’m not sure why. I had no problem letting "The Fast and the Furious" entertain me, and it’s just as trashy as this movie.

However, if you put the first half and the lack of great action aside, the biggest distraction (actually, probably the biggest in the movie) is the awful direction by Dominic Sena. Sena handled the “emotional” scenes wonderfully in a visual sense (quite reminiscent to Steven Soderbergh’s camerawork in "Erin Brockovich"), but the action sequences are such an enigma to watch that you finally just give up. I’m glad Sena didn’t try to imitate the slow-mo effect of "The Matrix," but the quickness of the cinematography is nearly the reciprocal of the first hour’s pace. The camera zooms by each scene so fast it’s unbelievable. It’s too bad, too, because Sena directed 1993’s underrated serial killer thriller "Kalifornia," which proved that he could direct a decent movie. Here, he just shows that he loves cars and clichés, although which is first priority is a question I don’t have the answer to.

Let’s talk about the actors, though. This is a talented cast. Talented, as in: Nicholas Cage (quite hammy and rather ineffective), Giovanni Ribisi (actually pretty good), Robert Duvall (totally out of place here), Angelina Jolie (the best thing here), Delroy Lindo (alright, but the part is thankless), Will Patton (I liked him, but again: what was he doing in this movie?), Scott Caan (not too bad), and Christopher Eccleston (makes for a rather wimpy bad guy). Again, Jolie is the best thing in this movie. She’s sexy, funny, and underused.

Ultimately, I can’t recommend this movie. It sucks, because it just could’ve been so much better—and when I say better, I mean good.


-Alex, July 2002