Folks, Harry here. This review is filled with spoilers, from one end to another. But damn I loved this review. I laughed my ass off at the descriptions of 'fantasy car physics' and 'reality car physics'. I've taken a lot of shit in the past for being a dye in the wool Bruckheimer Film Junkie, but folks... sometimes (moriarty) ya just have to drop the pretension and just get down and groovy with the coolness of the moment. Every film in the Bruckheimer filmography is a part of the same universe. All the same laws apply. It's the same sort of thing if you walk into a Hitchcock film or a John Ford film or a John Carpenter film or an Eighties Slasher film. There are rules... and exceptional exceptions to these rules. But you must respect the rules in order to enjoy it. And if it ain't your bag, then I'm sorry baby... I really am. But I dig the 'filtered' world of slow motion and roaring car engines, with those yellow to brown skies and the fifteen degree beads of rain with the tinted blue. I love the improbable impossible car chase. The mach ten motorcycle. The mirror reflected sunglasses... the pop-song love scene... the good guy being damaged hurt and triumphant. There are rules and an aesthetic to the Jerry Bruckheimer universe... and from the sound of Trigger's GONE IN 60 SECONDS review... that universe is very much alive and fun in this latest Bruckheimer epic...

Hi Harry, it's Trigger here once again to "divulge" information about the latest Jerry Bruckheimer movie for your pleasure... you owe me one.

Let me start by telling you what happened to me recently... My Jeep Grand Cherokee was stolen a few weeks ago. I had that worthless club on it and I was only insured for liability - so my car is likely in Mexico by now, and I'm out some $15,000 including car and contents. I've been wanting to see this movie since I first heard about it (mostly because of the names attached to the film), but having MY car stolen kinda took the wind out of my sails...

My movie buddy (Twenty8) and his girlfriend were approached in the mall a few days ago and were each handed passes to go see this advance screening of an unfinished movie by the name of Gone in 60 Seconds. He of course asked me if I wanted to go - to which I replied "yes" (of course)... which brings us to today...

Well... last night I went to go see Hot Water Music and Elliot (punk rock) at a local club, so I ended up sleeping in until noon. Then I spent most of the day at my father's house talking about Speedvision and looking in the AutoTrader for a replacement. Twenty8 spent the day with his girlfriend trying to read a 450 page book for one of his classes (a paper is due on it on Wednesday - the slacker).

Anyway... I've had cars and stolen cars on the brain for the past few weeks now and I think that was appropriate mental prep to go see this movie about auto theft...

So Twenty8 and his girlfriend come pick me up about two hours before showtime (right about the time my migraine starts kicking in) and we speed off to the theatre. Upon arrival we find that the line is rather large and I realize that we're probably going to have to sit in the front row again. Ugh... so anyway, we manage to aquire some seats that aren't quite in the front row and then we head off for snacks. Fuck Harkins for changing gummy bears! Yes... that's what I said... FUCK HARKINS THEATRES FOR CHANGING GUMMY FUCKING BEARS! See... Twenty8 and I have been going to movies together for several years now and for years we always got the same thing - Package of Haribo Gummy Bears and a cup of Mountain Dew. That's how we fully enjoyed movies - high on caffiene and gummy bear sugar... but Harkins decided to save a few pennies by switching the Haribo Bears with these sissy Care Bear Gummies... now I know Gummy Bears are sissy anyway, but I'm not eating no damn care bears... besides the Care Bear ones taste like shit and the packages are half the size of the Haribo ones. Now I haven't looked too hard, but I haven't found any place that sells the Haribo bears so that I can just smuggle them in to the theatre - but half the time we forget our souvenier cups ($1 refills all year) so it's not likely we'd remember the Gummies... anyway... I digress... So I have to get rid of this headache - so I get myself a hot dog and some red vines (boycotting the care bears) and some Mountain Dew. The hot dog bun must've been there since last month... I think I chipped my tooth on it. I choked it down anyway cuz I hadn't eaten all day... I also finished off the Red Vines before the show started. Twenty8 showed his loyalty to Haribo by purchasing Jordan Almonds (why anyone would eat those is beyond me). Finally... after waiting in our seats for an hour, they make the standard announcement that this movie is unfinished and the sound and music aren't final and that it's in a rough state blah blah... It wasn't that rough, but there were a few moments of unfinished looking effects. I'm getting ahead of myself though...

If you've ever seen the original Gone In 60 Seconds, you probably don't want to come anywhere near this movie... well this film is only loosely based on the original shot in '74. I hadn't seen the original since '80 and didn't remember much at all... I had intended on renting it before hand to psyche myself up for the new one. After seeing the new one, I rented the original just to refresh my memory... I highly reccommend renting the original before seeing this movie. Aside from being hilariously rediculous, there are a few scenes which appear in a mutated form in the reprisal - such as a scene in which a cop stops by the chop shop just minutes after the crew of theives discover that a car they had just stolen contains pounds and pounds of heroin - some of which ends up on the ground. By the way - I'm going to spoil - so that's your spoiler warning - perhaps Harry will warn you of spoilers as well. Anyhow - the original was made almost entirely by stunt drivers and lacked a script and continuity and acting and editing and directing and anything else resembling a motion picture.

This film was a far cry from that... it had acting and directing and script and some continuity even. You've all seen a Bruckheimer movie, so you pretty much know what to expect. As you may know, this movie has Nick Cage in it (who reportedly was lured in by $20Million plus 15% of the film's gross), Angelina Jolie, Giovanni Ribisi, Robert Duvall, Delroy Lindo, Scott Caan, James Duval, Timothy Olyphant and even Master P.

Basically - this movie plays like Armageddon - but instead of having to organize a team of experts to race against time to prevent the end of the earth, it's having to organize a team of experts to race against time to steal 50 cars and save Ribisi's life. This movie is very formulaic and contrived. It is very entertaining though... One thing I'll say for Bruckheimer films is that as outrageous and silly as they are, they are fun as hell to watch. If you don't like Con Air or The Rock or Armageddon - you will not like this movie. If you don't like Smokey and the Bandit - you probably won't like this either. This seems like a strange project for Bruckheimer to have undertaken... remaking such a garbage movie. He must've seen potential where most mortals couldn't.

The movie starts out strong with a terriffic scene involving Ribisi's character stealing a porche from a dealership lot... then it just slows down for character development - typical of JB, but he usually throws in a little excitement here and there during the character development. Cage's character is Ribisi's older brother who was like the best car theif until he quit a few years earlier to life the clean life. Ribisi accidently leads police to the warehouse containing 13 other stolen luxury cars and the man in charge is none too happy about it... so he threatens to kill him unless his brother (cage) comes out of retirement to steal 50 luxury cars in 4 days. Having no choice, he agrees and starts rounding up his posse. The following scenes play just like in Armageddon where Bruce Willis has to assemble his best crew to go drill the asteroid. One of the retired theives is now a driving instructer who we catch up with during a lesson with this horrible asian driver (and actress); another one is a mute mortician (played by the hitman who had a son from Lock Stock and 2 Smoking Barrels); Angelina Jolie is now a mechanic and a bartender with cool hair...

Anyhow, the team assembles over the course of a day or three or two (continuity errors between dialogue and subtitles ensue) and they begin to locate the target cars - all the while being tailed by two bumbling cops (Delroy and Timothy) who work auto theft division and drive a BMW for a squad car .

So finally it comes down to stealing all 50 cars in 12 hours... it's just a bunch of eye candy at this point mostly... not really special effects wise, but more like great camera work in the style of most Bruckheimer films... For a movie about auto theft - there isn't really a whole lot of auto theft going on. Well they steal a bunch of cars, but you don't really see them doing it as much as you'd think... of course, the movie would've been an extra 50 minutes long had they shown all 50 cars being stolen (as there is 60 seconds to a minute)... but the real fun doesn't come until the final car... Elanore...

See, like in the first movie - they give all the cars girl's names (but have a better explaination for it in this movie) and Elanore happens to be, like in the first movie, this Mustang... a '67 Shelby GT 350 actually. In some ways this film acts somewhat like a sequel rather than a remake in the same way Evil Dead 2 does to Evil Dead... ED2 is totally a remake, but some scenes are sequelesque (I just made up a new word?). Elanore is like this bitch Cage could never score with (in the movie they describe it as a flying unicorn or something stupid) - every time he tried to boost a '67 Shelby GT350 (like why would he even try in the first place? They are all registered and accounted for - it's not like you could drive it around once you stole it) something would go wrong... so he saves it till last.

In the first film - this was the money shot - 40 minutes or so of cop chasing and car crashing through crowded streets with this Mustang - destroying some 90+ cars. That's what was intended for this film as well... a huge car chase with a Mustang. Like I said before - if you like Bruckheimer films - you'll like this one... this car chase is straight out of some alternate universe (you know - the one in which garbage truck drivers ignore their surroundings and keep moving their trucks resulting in pursuit cars getting blocked off while chasing someone down an alley) or some other planet on which the gravity is such that a 1967 Mustang is as quick and agile as a Viper or something. If you've never driven one, I can tell you - they handle like a boat. Aside from the physics, the car chase is fun to watch - not as much shakey camera as in the Rock's chase scene. The cinematography was actually quite outstanding... and while I'm on the subject - I'd like to add that the locations were great as well. The acting and dialogue was on par with what should be expected from a big budget action flick such as this. Anyway - the car chase has it's silly moments such as a scene in what looked like that canal reservior thing that was in Grease, Terminator 2, Repo Man, etc... Cage is driving through this canal in this Shelby with 10 cop cars and a helocoptor on his ass and he hits the nitrous and goes in speeds in excess of 160 - far too fast for cop cars and a helocoptor to keep up with apparently . The scene goes on for quite awhile and ends up on this bridge where the most amazing thing happens... on the bridge there is some sort of accident stretching 8 or 10 car lengths... Cage backs up and then barrells towards this flatbed towtruck using it as a launch ramp and vaulting over 60 yards or so in the most hilarious special effect sequence in the whole movie. Amazingly, the car is still capable of motion after this and he drives off to deliver the car (which is a little worse for the wear at this point)... let me just say something here - cars don't act like they do in the Dukes of Hazzard... When you jump a normal car, the front end (being much heavier than the back end) gets drawn towards the earth's gravitational pull and collides with such a force that it tweaks the frame of the car and probably breaks the axle. When a fantasy car jumps, it lands on all 4 wheels like a cat would land on its feet and then drives off. That stuff always bugged me.

Ok so Cage delivers the car 10 minutes late (and all fucked up) and the bad guy says that's just not acceptable and decides to kill him for his efforts because 49 cars isn't 50 cars and 5:10 am isn't 5 am or something... But Cage escapes death and goes back to kill the bad guy (I know I'm saying "the bad guy" but I don't know what else to call him - I'm aware of how it sounds - we're talking about the guy who initially was going to kill Cage's brother... that's a bad guy thing to do, right?) and there's this whole shooting guns thing and the cop shows up and it winds up that Cage saves the cops life by pushing "the bad guy" off this catwalk thing. The bad guy falls to his death in this ultra-cheesey scene straight out of Die Hard and every other movie in which the bad guy is falling from a building or something and the camera is looking down at him as he's falling and he's looking up at the camera with this stupid look on his face while he's shooting his gun at the camera. I know you've seen it before. In the end, Cage's brother buys him a '67 shelby - all rusted out and piece of shit looking - and he drives off into the sunset with Angelina Jolie... the end... typical ending - typical movie - typical typical... but FUN. It's a fun ride. Not the best in my opinion, but I rather enjoyed it. I think this film is a great accomplishment considering the director's other body of work which consists of Kalifornia and Janet Jackson: Rhythm Nation and that's it. This movie probably won't thrill you out of your pants unless you own a copy of the original Gone in 60 Seconds and watch it every week - but it surely won't disappoint if you like movies that Bruckheimer or Cage's names are attached to.

About an hour and ten minutes in you get to see a chicks ass and her boob, but unfortunately you don't get to see Jolie's this time. There is a bit of sexual tension developed between Cage and Jolie, but their relationship is never explored too much. There's a funny scene involving dog poop which I won't go into... The part I didn't like in this movie was anything with Master Pee... he plays this gangster hood street thug car theif who tries to pop a cap in Cage's ass a few times... although his appearance added some action to the film, I don't have much appreciation for gangstas in general and I felt it was unneccesary in this particular film. Perhaps their appearance in the film is because in the original there is a car full of black kids drinking out of empty cans of coors and smoking joints that they kept cutting to. I don't really know.

I have a feeling that this movie will put the asses in the seats. It's pretty good considering the original they had to work with. I can remember seeing the original one and being impressed with the action in it, but tonight when I watched it I was laughing my ass off. I give this film my approval - even with its shortcomings, it's fun to watch. Go see it if you like action movies. Just remember - as always - turn down your reality meter and turn off your continuity detector and have some fun.

Trigger