Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000)
Directed by Dominic Sena
Ex-car thief Randall Raines is forced out of retirement to save his brother Kip after a boost gone wrong. With the help of allies old and new, they race to meet the demands of notorious crime boss Raymond Calitri as the police are in hot pursuit.
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To that end, Bruckheimer and Sena would have done well to study the great car chase movies; Peter Yates' Bullitt (1968), William Friedkin's The French Connection (1971) and Jade (1995), Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), John Frankenheimer's Ronin (1998), and Disney's Herbie the Love Bug movies, to get the concept of clarity, or maybe become inspired and develop a few original ideas of their own.
The audience I caught this with seemed to enjoy the proceedings well enough -- which just makes me wonder if any of them had ever seen The French Connection 2 or Bullitt before.
Depending on how you take your action, "Gone in 60 Seconds," is either a triumph of ultra-slick silliness (read: a popcorn thrill ride that belongs in the JBAAD theme park along with "Top Gun," "Crimson Tide," "Bad Boys," "The Rock," "Con Air" and "Armageddon") or a head-scratching attempt to jack wallets with the finesse these characters use on cars.
“Gone In 60 Seconds” was directed by Dominic Sena (“Kalifornia”) but in the end, he’s little more than a puppet to producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who worked out through the years his own recipe for a guarenteed summer blockbuster.
Dominic Sena's "Gone in 60 Seconds," based on a cult 1974 film of the same name (famous for a showstopping 40-minute car chase sequence), is the latest brain(less)child of producer Jerry Bruckheimer (1997's "Con Air," 1998's "Armageddon")--someone who knows how to make a movie fast-paced, and how to orchestrate overblown action setpieces--and it should have been the film to reinforce the idea of letting go of your inhibitions and driving fast every now and again.
There's not one scrap of art in Gone in 60 Seconds, but there's no flab either; in its pedal-to-the-metal professionalism, it's almost a lowbrow version of Ronin.
Gone in 60 Seconds is a check-your-brain-at-the-door, dig into some popcorn, sit back and enjoy summer explosion movie, brought to you by the same folks who did Con Air.
Memphis enlists his old reformed car-thief friends played by actors who are, in the normal course of things, way too good for this nonsense: Angelina Jolie, Robert Duvall, Chi McBride and Vinnie Jones, the memorable thug from Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.