‘Gone ’ has action, very little else
60 SECONDS from page 6
see maybe what Sena was trying
to get at here. How hard it must
have been for him to move from
a story that painted bqjd people
with clarity to this film. The
criminals in “Gone in 60
Seconds” are apparently leg
endary, but don’t perceive what
is clear to us 12 seconds after we
meet the Ruthless Villain.
The idea of the Ruthless
Villain is this: he threatens awful
murder unless a particular
demand is met - in this case,
Raines must steal SO vintage cars
in four days to bail his brother
Kip (Giovanni Ribisi) out of a
botched job. Making demands is
Raymond Calitri (Christopher
Eccleston), who we know as the
Ruthless Villain because he
hates baseball.
The Ruthless Villain con
struct tells us that meeting the
demands does not matter: the
man’s a Ruthless Villain, which
means he’s going to kill the
Raines brothers anyway. So
when the final encounter occurs
after long slogs of smoky wheels
and car chases over wet streets, it
feels like they should have went
after him, oh, four days before.
Instead, Memphis, whose
name is never explained to my
recollection, comes out of retire
ment (he was a kiddie go-cart
instructor before) to assemble a
large crew of fellow retirees and
rookies. Among them is Robert
Duvall, who stands in the auto
shop and crosses cars off the list.
Angelina Jolie, who has second
billing in this movie, only has 10
or 15 lines.
Jolie plays nerselt essential
ly, which works because
Angelina Jolie is an odd woman
in real life. But just imagine if
the heroine had been say,
Gwenyth Paltrow.
There’s more: two cops with
grudges against Memphis
(Delroy Lindo and Timothy
Olyphant), 2 rival gangs, a silent
thief of extraordinary strength
(Vinnie Jones), and an ugly dog.
The dog figures heavily in the
movement of the plot, which
reaches critical red-light stage
when the dog eats a few car keys
and - you guessed it - has to
poop it out so the thieves can
rifle through the waste and scoop
them out. Lovely.
But the frustrating element
that looms above all this is the
movie’s pace - which is marked
by a digital clock that reads “to
the deadline.” Get to it already!
Must we see the criminals take
pictures of all the cars they’re
going to steal? Must we go
through a useless subplot of a
stolen Cadillac with heroin
stashed in the trunk?
When “Gone in 60 Seconds”
finally settles down into the main
sequence of the car chase, we
instantly know it will be inferior
to the tunnel chases in “Ronin.”
We won’t bring up the
“Connection” or “Bullit” chases
here. Just know Cage’s wild ride
through the Long Beach factory
district in a vintage Mustang is
less than gripping.
ran or tne prooiem is the
music - a techno beat accompa
nies the whole movie. Part of it is
the editing. There is one adrena
line-filled moment where Cage
punches the nitio button and the
Mustang bolts to 160 mph. But
that doesn't make up for 90 min
utes of anticipation.
"Gone in 60 Seconds” not
only thinks it’s humorous, but a
riot So many dead-air jokes have
been added to the screenplay,
probably after the fact. Sena, or
someone, must have known that
the drab look of the production,
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