Three out of
five stars
The keen eyed amongst us might remember the days when Giovanni Ribisi played bit parts in long-running American sitcoms. Well just look at him now! He’s right up there on the posters next to big names like Duvall and Jolie.
But regardless of the big names starring in the film this is really producer, Bruckheimer’s show - so much so that he has equal credence to the stars of the film, and the director (Dominic Shea) has none whatsoever!
But anyway on to the film! Ribisi plays Kip Raines, a rookie car thief who has just dug himself into a huge pile of trouble and Cage, who plays big brother Randall ‘Memphis’ , a retired maverick car thief, has the dirty job of shovelling his little brother out of the mess.
Of course, the fact that Memphis is retired totally justifies this film (car thieving is bad, you know). Fifty cars must be stolen within three days or Kip gets it, as well as his mother, his close family, his pets, and his close family’s pets!
Enlisting the help of a crew of Memphis’s ex boosting-buddies with a bunch of names lifted right out of Bruckheimer’s cheesy moniker collection: Sway (Jolie), Otto (Duvall), Freb (James Duval), Mirror Man (T.J. Cross) and Tumbler (Scott Caan) to name but a few.
Unfortunately, Detectives Castlebeck and Drycoff (Delroy Lindo and Timothy Olyphant) have to do the policing thing, thus setting the scene for some stupendous car chases.
A poor script ultimately limits the cast, so you can’t really blame them for not fleshing out their characters on the screen. But then again pictures of the cast in cars driving quite fast (this happens a lot in the film) isn’t the best way for the audience to empathise with the cast.
But they aren’t paying for empathy though; who gives a damn about empathy when you’ve got such a huge amount of horsepower to toy around with. It seems that Bruckheimer’s usual dose of testosterone-fuelled air guitar music has given way to a slightly better, more youthful soundtrack (Moby, Gomez) and the film is all the better without it.
Go see it if you like the sound of it so far, but don’t by any means expect the best car chases you’ve ever seen, in fact most of the film looks like a Bon Jovi video.
But, for all of the bitching I have given the film, you will walk out feeling exhilarated, whether it will have finished or not will be a different matter altogether!