Gone In 60 Seconds (2000)

The pace at DVD.net has been hectic to say the least. The rate of new releases has almost outstripped the ability of the DVD.net staff to review them. What DVD's do we like? What DVD's do we enjoy ourselves? What's a movie genre that's a must buy?

This one has been in my collection for quite a while. I'm a sucker for 'car movies'. Even if the movie isn't that great, guys will watch two hours of race cars zooming around an oval track so anything more interesting than that is quite ok.

'Gone in 60 Seconds' is a Jerry Bruckheimer summer film that has a plot that can be written on the back of a proverbial bus ticket.

Nicholas Cage plays a legendary car thief - a 'boost' who is well known among the Grand Theft Auto unit of the LAPD. His younger brother, Giovanni Ribisi, is also a car thief however much more impetuous and fighting his brother's 'legend'.

Ribisi is in the process of stealing cars for a English crime lord who wishes to bulk freight them to South America. His carelessness leads the police to discover the warehouse where they are held and they lose the entire shipment. Ribisi is now in deep trouble and Nicholas Cage is forced to steal fifty cars in three days to replace the haul that was lost to the police. However the police see this as an opportunity to lock up Cage for good.

Angelina Jolie and Robert Duvall are on hand to help in matters (and pick up a paycheck). Will Patton and Vince Jones do quite reasonable jobs however the script is definitely against them. I think Cage has more lines of dialogue to the car than to Jolie who is his 'love interest'.

Characterisation is a weak point with paper thin personalities. Cage is playing Cage again - he's doing his past characters in Con Air and Face/Off and the rest.

The police and the bad guys seem to fairly faceless playing the sort of dedicated cops and deranged crimelords you've seen in other popcorn thrillers.

You might say that the stars are the stolen automobiles and sure enough, they are extremely beautiful.

The centre of the film's focus is the 1967 Ford Mustang Shelby GT-500. It's Cage's dark horse; a car he's never been able to steal and it's the focus of the three main chases. It's the focus of the film so it's in camera a fair bit and it's in the soundtrack a lot.

The chases themselves are not the best you've ever seen and they look so formulaic that you'd wish someone competant like John Frankenheimer was at the helm.

Dominic Sena has a decent sense of pace and a definite kinetic style however he seems to be shooting a music video a lot of times and the various pieces of the film seem disjointed. His best work is the 1993 'Kalifornia' with Brad Pitt, Juliette Lewis and David Duchovny.

The picture is 2.35:1 anamorphic. Overall a good if not great transfer. The problem is that the original film has relatively poor black levels and the overall look is one that seems drab on DVD. The daylight scenes have a slight sepia tint. Of course the best time to steal cars is at dusk or night so that's where most of the action takes place. Colour and contrast looks great with the brightly coloured cars. There's also a fair bit of bright neon at night and this also looks quite good.

There are a lot of sequences where there are repeated patterns, ie. horizontal car grilles and the infamous venetian blinds and there are some instances of slight aliasing here.

Of course there's a lot of fast action but these are all handled quite well by the DVD compression. I'm not sure why the 'look' of the film seems so muted but there you are.

"Let me get my tool... (pulls housebrick out of his back pocket)"

There's two 384k/s Dolby 5.1 tracks - one English and one in Russian. I'm sure the ex-KGB agents in Australia are happy. The English track is quite excellent - no problems anywhere. You get the expected fidelity with a modern film soundtrack. The cars sound vastly different and there is quite strong rear channel activity and panning.

Bass is limited in its use to the driving score (sorry!) and to enhance the deep, uneven beat of the Mustang's V8. The bass is never truly deep, however the subwoofer helps in giving the engine 'body' and 'weight'. Revving car engines are everpresent and there's nothing there that would dissappoint people.

There's not that much to say - a good soundtrack but the film never stretches the limits set by 384k/s Dolby.

The menus are static but quite attractive. There are a number of quite good quality extras. There's a short piece on Jerry Bruckheimer and his past work. That should give you an idea on just what's wrong with this film and others like it. Since when is the producer worth so much comment in most films? There are many people who are more worthy subjects.

There are a number of short features however it seems to consist of the producer and director patting themselves on the back.

An interesting bit is titled 'The Big Chase' and it's a technical examination of how the action sequences were done. Any student of SFX and CGI would learn something here.

There's a very superfluous piece that examines the various characters in the film and the actors themselves. Since the characters are so poorly developed, I found it to be addressing something that does not need to be examined.

There's a music video by 'The Cult' however there's no way you could place it in the film. It's also non-anamorphic and 256k/s stereo.

There's a theatrical trailer. It's non-anamorphic and only 192k/s Dolby Pro-Logic however it has some of the strongest surround cues I've ever heard for plain Pro-Logic.

I can understand why non-car enthusiasts don't like this. I can even understand if car enthusiasts don't like it. If you like Bruckheimer films then you know what to expect and I wasn't expecting too much.

I have to have it to complement 'Ronin' and 'Bullitt' both of which are superior to this.

There's one sequence that tends to sum things up - a scene straight from the 'Dukes of Hazzard' that everyone but Bruckheimer would NOT include due to the fact that it's so derivative and cliched. I don't know, you just have to like '67 Mustangs.