Gone in 60 Seconds (2000) Movie Review

You are Nicolas Cage. After clawing your way through B-movies to an Academy Award for Leaving Las Vegas, what do you do? You take part after part in a progressively worsening slate of action films (pausing only for the even worse melodrama City of Angels), bottoming out with Snake Eyes and 8MM. Your action career is at an obvious end. So do you go back to the drama you can pull off so well?

No! You take a role in Gone in 60 Seconds, and try to extend your movie muscle even further! Here's a movie that's pure, unabashed Hollywood: Randall "Memphis" Raines (Cage), in order to convince a mean criminal to spare the life of his brother (Giovanni Ribisi), must BLOW UP 50 cars in the next 72 hours!

Er, wait a sec. Steal. STEAL 50 cars. You see, Memphis is The Best of The Best of L.A. car thieves. Retired, of course, but a fabulous car thief. Naturally, kid brother follows in Memphis's footsteps but gets himself into trouble, so Memphis has to come out of retirement to save his butt. It's a plot so insanely stupid it can only mean one thing: You are watching a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. (See also: Armageddon.)

The only part of 60 Seconds less believable than Ribisi and Cage being related is Cage and nubile vixen Angelina Jolie being former lovers. In the film, Jolie plays the hiply-named "Sway", a likewise retired car "boost" whose blonde dreadlocks make her both a blaring "Look at Me!" siren during night jobs as well as a fire hazard.

Naturally, I expect Gone in 60 Seconds (a remake of a 1974 flick of the same name) to appeal to audiences for the one (and only) reason it appealed to me: Because there are lots and lots of car chases with lots and lots of cool cars. Naturally, Memphis and crew are not stealing 50 Hyundais. They're stealing Hummers, Ferraris, Porsches, Aston Martins, Corvettes, T-Birds, and a mythical 1967 Shelby Mustang GT 500 that becomes Memphis's Moby Dick.

The cars are spun out, jumped, peeled out, jumped some more, and accelerated to ungodly speeds. Surprisingly, director Dominic Sena (credited mostly with commercials) pulls this off with a remarkably low body count, which is admirable.

Gone in 60 Seconds is ultimately a feast for the eyes provided you turn off your brain before you sit down to watch it. Not to mention, you'll be surprised how hard it is not to challenge the chump in the car next to you to a little drag race on the ride home.

Aka Gone in Sixty Seconds.



I know why the Cage bird sings.