 🍿 | 🎙️ EPISODE 601: 11.18.22 Starting in 2020, I decided to watch & review the entire Nicolas Cage filmography in alphabetical order. This is 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔜𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔬𝔣 ℭ𝔞𝔤𝔢 – Chapter 29. There might come a time, in this series or some other one, when I refuse to do the work, when the thought of editing out 30 or so clips from a godawful movie is too much to bear, but here in these dwindling days of 2022, I can say to you dear reader/dear listener, that today... is not that day. You're gonna have to process the extreme stupidity of Gone in 60 Seconds, albeit it in about 90 minutes less than it takes to watch the actual film (which you should not — under any circumstances — do). This shit sucked so much ass. And it's not so much because the film is impossibly dumb, which it obviously is, it's because it is SOOOOO boring. Let's get this over with. |
Shit, even the opening credits let you know that this movie doesn't give a single fuck...
To kick things off, Giovanni Ribisi steals a Porsche in an extremely low-key way...
Just kidding. There wasn't anything low-key about that and he gets into some pretty big trouble for doing it that way, actually. They were attempting to steal a bunch of cars for an English gangster and Giovanni's shenanigans fucked up the entire operation. Whoops. Also, even though one might assume this is a movie full of cars and car chases and shit, that opening action is basically it for the next hour or so. Normally, I wouldn't care (not a car guy, as previously mentioned), but the ensuing action is somehow even worse.
We're introduced to Cage giving a pep talk at a kids go-cart place (?) ...
That's certainly a thing people do. I'm sure it is.
Will Patton — the first in just a freaking CAVALCADE of That Guy actors — shows up to tell Cage (an ex-criminal named "Memphis" Raines lol) that his little brother Kip (Ribisi) is in big trouble and is basically a dead man if Cage doesn't agree to steal 50 cars for the English gangster (Raymond Calitri — every character has the dumbest name in this thing) in four days time. "That's crazy!" Cage shouts. "Impossible!" Or something like that, but you know he's gonna do it obviously. They're also 'torturing' his brother by handcuffing him inside a car and lifting that car up and down with a forklift. LOL WHY...
Cage goes to meet Calitri (That Guy, Christopher Eccleston) who's known as "The Carpenter" because he's super into woodworking. Like, he makes chairs and shit. (Can't make this stuff up, folks.) Here they set up the entire 'plot' of the movie and — look, you're not gonna believe this — but it's really dumb...
I like that he kind of sounds like Old Gregg from The Mighty Boosh, though. Cage finds Kip in a pretty bad spot and Calitiri lays out his options, none of them good...
The next 45 minutes or so are basically just "getting the gang back together" nonsense. But first Kip makes his big brother a nice home cooked meal...
Then Cages goes to visit his mommy who works at a diner, played by the lovely and talented, bonafide legend That Guy, Grace Zabriskie (ladies can be That Guys too, you know)...
There, he's made by two cops who alert LAPD Detectives Castlebeck and Drycoff (That Guys, Delroy Lindo and Timothy Olyphant ) that the notorious Memphis Raines is back in town. But Cage has bigger fish to fry. The first piece of the puzzle in reassembling his crew of car thieves is getting his former mentor Robert Duvall back on the saddle. But first they need to listen to a cassette tape of some car engines revving like a couple of insane freaks...
Next up is Donny (probably my favorite That Guy performance here by the great Chi McBride). He's working as a driving instructor and the movie uses this to go hog wild on some Asian lady driver stereotypes...
Cage and Duvall try to recruit more guys but they're finding mostly dead ends. The filmmakers also couldn't find the time to properly ADR in the moaning on the other end of line...
(It's a small thing, sure. But indicative of how little this movie cares about anything.)
They do manage to wrangle up two final members of the gang. The first is a mute coroner, played by the leering Vinnie Jones, who leaves a sandwich on one of the bodies at the morgue...
And the last is none other than Angelina Jolie, Cage's ex-flame in this universe. She's reluctant. And also SHE HAS DREADLOCKS. 🚨WHITE CHICK WITH DREADLOCKS ALERT 🚨...
Then the fucking rapper Master P shows up out of the blue to confront Cage for some reason and you can sort of tell here that Cage knows just what a colossal stinker he's filming. Anyway, Vinnie Jones shows up to save the day...
Next, Cage and his brother have another excruciatingly bad conversation. People — even fake car thieves in a movie! — DO NOT talk like this...
I think it's important to realize that this movie is right at the tail-end of what is arguably Cage's most noteworthy stretch of movie-making...
A Best Actor Oscar, blockbusters on top of blockbuster, starring roles in movies by master directors John Woo, De Palma and Scorsese, the fascinatingly underrated City of Angels?! Ignoring 8mm, Cage just had an unimpeachably half-decade of success, both critically and commercially. There was nowhere else to go really. The Law of Averages dictate that a stinker (or seven) had to happen. And Gone in 60 Seconds is the leader in the clubhouse right now for the greatest stinker of his career.
Anyway, here's one of the only times he seems to be having a little bit of fun with this terrible script...
Because most of his old cronies are either missing, dead or not interested, Cage agrees to allow his little brother's ragtag crew to join forces (featuring That Guys: Scott Caan, James Duval and William Lee Scott, among others). But before they can jump right into boosting cars, they need to do some recon, which involves the classic car thief thing of taking photos of the car you're gonna steal in plain view with a group of dudes and then stroking the car and talking to it...
They get into another fight with Master P and Cage sort of does a black dude's voice accent in this scene and, yeah, hmmm, well...
Yup. OK. Moving on...
We are now one hour into this two-hour movie and there's been basically ZERO cool car shit outside of the opening Porsche theft. I don't even really like that stuff all that much, but I thought that was the whole movie's appeal?! The audience is essentially sitting around waiting for some action, or really anything that could be deemed "entertaining" and these moments are exceedingly rare. But Chi McBride does call William Lee Scott a "ghetto smurf" so that's something...
The time finally comes for them to do what one would have assumed they'd have been doing the entire movie: steal cars. So Cage gets them jacked up in this meme-worthy scene soundtracked to his favorite motivational music, which is? You guessed it! "Low Rider" by War. LOLLLLL....
"Low Rider, Donny. Donny? Low Rider?" — I want that on my tombstone. The first part of the heist they just walk into a big garage full of cars and just do a bunch of random shit and drive them out! They're not even being stealth. There's no drama! None!! I guess if you're a car guy some of this hot-wiring stuff is interesting? To me, it's like watching someone do brainless work at an office. Like I might as well be watching a screen share of some spreadsheets on Zoom.
The hamfisted romance between Cage and Jolie takes centerstage for a minute (and only a minute) with some — you're really not gonna guess this — sex/car double entendre...
It's actually not even double entendre. It's just literally the names of car parts and what have you. It's dumber than dumb is what it is.
Because what this movie needed was another faction of bad dudes, a Latino gang shows up out of the blue, led by That Guy, Michael Peña...
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that a dog ate a set of car keys that they needed so James Duval and some other guy give the dog Ex-Lax so it'll diarrhea out the car keys and then they can get the keys and this is so gross that Michael Peña and his gang just drive off, never to be seen or heard from again.
Another one of the cars they need is in a police impound lot so William Lee Scott dresses up in a Halloween pimp outfit to distract a guard so that Cage and company (wearing the stupidest masks!) can break in and at one point he pulls out a Barbie doll and makes it do a dance as he sings The Commodores' hit "She's a Brick House"...
Then, in what's basically the first fun scene since the opening five minutes (we're closing in on the 90-minute mark btw), Scott and Vinnie Jones steal a hummer that has somebody's pet python still in it as they're getting chased through a parking garage. It's all set to DMX and if the whole movie had just been this? It would have been pretty damn good! (Or at the very least, what one would assume the movie was going to be)...
The cops know Cage is going to wait to steal that one special car — he calls it "Eleanor" — last, and so they're waiting for him. This sets up the centerpiece car chase that we've all been waiting for...
This car chase IS pretty epic and lasts almost the rest of the movie, on and off. I don't think it's the best car chase ever captured on film but it's certainly the longest. At one point, Cage stops to talk to Eleanor...
The car's gotten pretty banged up doing all this car chasing business, hopefully that isn't a problem. The car chase intensifies...
At one point a helicopter starts chasing him through famous Los Angeles locations, like the above seaport, the reservoir where Terminator 2 was shot, and ultimately over the Vincent Thomas Bridge, which has notoriously featured in many films. Cage goes full Evel Knievel for this sequence on the bridge...
Then the main bad guy returns for first time since the beginning of the movie to do some bad dialogue...
He's mad because Cage is late and also because the car is so banged up but there were definitely other cars within the 50 that were in such worst condition than this, like that Hummer which was damn near totaled because of the snake, right? Oh well. You know what we say here... DO. NOT. WORRY ABOUT IT. Why am I trying to make sense of this stupid fucking movie?!
Cage does some Cage stuff there, but honestly? It's too little too late. They take Cage hostage even though he delivered all the cars but he gets out easily with help from his brother and Will Patton who's back on their side now.
Then he has the final showdown with the Englishman whom he really annoys by fucking up some of his woodwork. I'm writing the dumbest sentences I've ever written right now. Anyway cage saves Delroy Lindo's life and kills the bad guy...
The cop lets him go because of all the life-saving and what not and also because "little brothers," right? Cut to the whole crew having a barbecue. Vinnie Jones then speaks for the first time in the movie saying something profound like Silent Bob's thing. I wonder where Kevin Smith stole that device from to begin with? (I don't care enough to look, but no way that was his own idea)...
Little brother Giovanni Ribisi buys Cage the car that he always wanted, the same model Mustang he stole for the car chase (don't worry about he could afford that or get such a rare car instantaneously). He makes out with dreadlocked Angelina Jolie. They all share a laugh. No more stealing for this crew. The movie ends with a horrible George Thorogood song, a truly fitting way to end just an abysmal film. I feel like I've aged ten years writing this damn review.
THE VERDICT: 1 CAGES OUT OF 10 • CLICK HERE for all 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔜𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔬𝔣 ℭ𝔞𝔤𝔢 Chapters + Ongoing Rankings.
CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 600 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 602 ⫸
⫷ EPISODE 600 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 602 ⫸
Gone in 60 Seconds (also known as Gone in Sixty Seconds) is a 2000 American action heist film starring Nicolas Cage, Angelina Jolie, Giovanni Ribisi, Christopher Eccleston, Robert Duvall, Vinnie Jones, Delroy Lindo, Chi McBride, and Will Patton. The film was directed by Dominic Sena, written by Scott Rosenberg, and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. The film is a loose remake of the 1974 H. B. Halicki film of the same name. It was released on June 9, 2000.
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