|
GONE
IN SIXTY SECONDS
5/10
US 2000
dir.
Dominic Sena
scr. Scott Rosenberg (based on a screenplay by H.B. Halicki)
cin. Paul Cameron
stars Nicolas Cage, Angelina Jolie, Delroy Lindo
running time 117m
Many’s the
time I’ve sat in a cinema waiting for a film to get going, to start to
engage – to become, in a word, good. Gone In Sixty Seconds, however,
provoked a very different reaction: alerted by the barrage of negative
reviews, and unimpressed by the trailer, I’d feared the worst, and waited
for the film to become embarrassing, to become bad. It didn’t happen.
Gone In Sixty Seconds is no masterpiece, but it’s by no means as
“perfectly dreadful” (Variety) as many critics might have you believe.
It’s a full-on action thriller, one which makes no bones about its ephemeral
disposability – the title tells you all you need to know. The film has
been programmed to please its audience, and it does so for as long as
it’s on the screen: there are hardly any dull moments, right up to the
climactic car-chase which, crucially, hits all the right buttons.
If director
Sena never goes any deeper than the most superficial level, at least that
means he never gives himself a chance to display any of the offensive
attitudes which marred his only previous effort behind the camera, the
Brad Pitt/David Duchovny serial-killer pic Kalifornia (1993). Sena
ruined that film’s intriguing premise by indulging in some increasingly
crass and facile treatment of the criminal underclass, in the form of
Pitt and girlfriend Juliette Lewis, as the film neared its conclusion.
No such pretensions
here. Scott Rosenberg showed with Things To Do With Denver When You’re
Dead that he’s among the more interesting Hollywood screenwriters
around, combining structural ingenuity with inventive dialogue – skills
that he transferred successfully to the mainstream with a previous Nic
Cage vehicle, Con Air. Though Sena is a marginally better director
than that movie’s Simon West, Con Air is the better film – if only
because it offered such a marvellous platform for John Malkovich’s antics.
In addition, much of Rosenberg’s work here – notably a Tarantino-style
discussion of TV characters’ registration plates – is drowned out by the
soundtrack’s ear-splitting ruckus of screeching tyres and thumping rock.
The inaudibility
of much of the dialogue isn’t a problem, of course, in such a relentlessly
visual, cartoonish movie. And it’s fairly appropriate, given the fact
that the film of which it’s a remake, Gone In 60 Seconds from 1974,
was notable for its sonic dislocation. Like most people, I haven’t seen
the film (it was mainly shown in drive-ins) but my appetite was whetted
when I read Todd McCarthy’s comments in Variety magazine:
… a real oddity in that at least 75% of it was shot without direct sound.
Whole scenes
play out with extensive voiceover conversations among several characters,
but with no
visual clue as to who’s doing the talking; sometimes there’s no-one on
screen or else
some men might be observed working but not moving their lips.
A one-man
project by HB Halicki, who was killed filming stunts for a projected sequel,
the original Gone sounds roughly similar in plot to its remake:
shady gangster places order for 50 cars with young thief (now Giovanni
Ribisi); young thief screws up; his retired superthief brother (Cage)
must fulfil the order or else the kid gets it; mayhem ensues. The original
(described by another reviewer as a ‘porn-like experience where you fast-forward
through the dull expository scenes to get to the good parts’) was also
notable for featuring among its cast George Cole, presumably the British
character actor of St Trinian’s and Minder fame. If so,
then Sena’s remake again stays faithful to its source with several English
faces prominently on view.
The most high-profile
of these in the film’s ad campaign is ex-footballer Vinnie Jones as Sphinx,
a silent psychotic moonlighting as a mortuary attendant. But, unlike Treat
Williams, who played a virtually identical character (except for the silent
bit) in Rosenberg’s Things To Do In Denver, Jones is given very
little to do – his silence is a gimmick, the set-up for a closing-scene
punchline when he gets to speak - and, like bulky Scott Caan, he fulfils
a primarily decorative function . Instead, it’s po-faced Christopher
Eccleston, not the sort of performer you’d expect to see in a Jerry Bruckheimer
production, who makes the biggest splash as bad-guy Raymond Calitri. Although,
with a name like that, the character should be Glaswegian, Eccleston employs
his own sneering Mancunian accent, with hilarious effect alongside the
film’s prevalent drawling Californians: he’s only in two scenes, but he’s
probably the main reason for seeing the picture, There’s a third Brit
presence is Lindo, as the genial older cop determined to thwart Cage’s
plans – he was born and bred in Birmingham, but has developed a fully
convincing Yank accent and demeanour.
The presence
of such colourful figures in the cast is part of the reason Gone In
60 Seconds passes the time so painlessly. There’s always something
going on, or somebody worth watching on the screen. This is,
in fact, an enjoyably over-populated movie, with a wide array of
characters popping up as gang members and assorted hangers-on, notably
Grace Zabriskie – an actress capable of frame-bursting intensity in her
work for David Lynch – on restrained form as Cage and Ribisi’s mother,
and the magnetically bug-eyed Timothy Olyphant (by far the best thing
about both Scream 2 and Go) who makes the most of the thankless
role of junior cop.
These relatively
minor names make as much impact as the ‘star’ supporting cast, headed
by Robert Duvall, idling in low Days of Thunder gear, Will Patton,
and Jolie – who once again suggests that the Academy’s decision to honour
her efforts in Girl,
Interrupted last year ahead of Chloe Sevigny in Boys
Don’t Cry will look increasingly bizarre with every film she makes.
It’s no coincidence that the one scene which revolves around Jolie is
also the film’s least effective – a half-arsed romantic interlude with
Cage, one in which the characters (they’re waiting to steal a car from
a smooching Haagen-Dazs style couple) have as little interest in proceedings
as the actors and the audience alike, generating as much heat as if they
were rubbing their respective Oscars together in an effort to strike a
spark.
Such static
scenes are thankfully few and far between – Sena wisely keeps things barrelling
along at a decent clip, following the lead provided by a script which
gives only the most functional and cursory attempts at sketching in character
and motivation. The death of Cage and Ribisi’s father is dealt with in
almost throwaway mention, and when Jolie makes an early 180 degree switch
from snubbing Cage to helping him, she does so on the conditions that
‘no questions’ are asked.
Ultimately
the film stands or falls on its visuals, and while Sena has no great cinematic
eye, neither does he commit any serious errors, apart from the occasional
ham-fisted use of clumsy filters. Almost every scene is played out in
a curious, slightly honeyed, slightly sepia light, with a result that’s
often strikingly reminiscent of the Ford Puma advert which spliced footage
of Steve McQueen from Bullitt into modern-day San Francisco. It’s
as if Sena is acknowledging the quaint aspects of making a film in the
year 2000 focussing on car theft – Olyphant taunts Cage with the comment
that, by the time he’s released from prison, there won’t even be cars
as he knows them. By no means a work of realism (even the original showed
the real effects of car chases – injured onlookers, ambulances, etc),
Gone tips even further into the realm of fantasy thanks to this
burnished visual sheen, Bullitt through multiple refractive lenses.
Sena’s other
major influence is more surprising – Michael Mann’s Heat,
another sympathetic-cop vs sympathetic-crook movie with a nocturnal LA
as a neon-lot backdrop. But this is definitely Heat lite, with
nowhere near the geographical or psychological scope and intensity of
that masterpiece. It’s hard to know what to make of Sena’s insistently
obvious use of ominous Michael Mann-style music (so Mann-style, in fact,
that at first I thought it was from Heat or The Insider)
whenever Lindo and Olyphant are shown spying on Cage and his gang. It
could be a) an hommage to a modern master, b) unconscious imitation
of an influentual stylist, or c) a piss-take, but if some aspects of Mann’s
magisterial style are seeping further into the mainstream, that’s
not such a bad development. It’s also fun to tick off the nods to American
Graffiti – Ribisi whispers “I love you” to a blonde in another
car, in a reversal of the Suzanne Somers/Richard Dreyfuss exchange in
Lucas’s classic, and later there’s a variation on that film’s ‘axle trick’
– in Lucas, perpetrated against cops, here deployed by Cage and Ribisi
precisely to attract Los Angeles’ finest.
These are
nice touches in a film with a surprising number of grace notes. Most gratuitous,
and nicest, is a moment during the climactic, entirely successful chase
sequence (45 minutes long in the original) in which Cage speeds along,
touching 150mph as he scads along the concete bed of the (cinematically
inevitable) LA river. A series of contrivances sees him zipping along
a city street backwards – proving, once and for all, that reverse really
is the fastest gear on a car. He catches the eye of a little black
kid who’s the passenger in a passing car, and they exchange a smile –
it’s a moment at least as effective as the film’s set-piece stunt, soon
after, when Cage speeds up a ramp and flies over an accident scene that’s
blocking his path.
You’re still
recovering from this stunt when the credits roll, and the film immediately
starts to fade from the memory. For multiplex audiences who’ve driven
to the movie, Gone may have a slightly longer resonance – that
queasiness as they search out their precious Volvo, the relief when they
find it where they’d left it two hours before. Then, Nic Cage’s example
still fresh in their mind, they put the key in the ignition - turn it
- slip into first - burn rubber.
by Neil
Young
-
|
