Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000) and Gone in 60 Seconds (1974)

Kip Raines couldn’t deliver fifty stolen high end cars on time so now his big brother Randall “Memphis” Raines has to step up to fill the contract or the bad guy will kill them both.  Randall puts together a crew, scouts the cars and decides to attempt the incredible feat of boosting all fifty in one night.  But the cops know something’s up so he must contend with them as well.

Everything about this one is just fun.  The casting is awesome (Nicolas Cage (no mega acting but still good) (Zandalee), Angelina Jolie (Original Sin), Robert Duval (Falling Down), Giovanni Ribisi (Lost Highway), Will Patton (Entrapment), Delroy Lindo (Blood In, Blood Out), Timothy Olyphant (Live Free or Die Hard)), the lighting is crazy with bright almost neon hues, the plot is streamlined, there are lots of beautiful cars and the high speed chase finale is pretty neat where they drive through the streets of Long Beach, CA and traverse a busy shipyard.  They really do deliver on everything you’d wanna see from a movie like this.

It’s one of those pictures with a good natured group of thieves like the Fast & Furious gang.  They have morals and are ripping off rich assholes (we assume) and fancy car dealerships because they only steal the most expensive brands and rarest cars in existence.  It’s not right but we presume these cars are insured and/or the owner can easily afford to buy a replacement.  Hell, these people might even deserve it.  If that mindset isn’t in place then this film isn’t going to be enjoyable at all.

Anyway I still recommend it.  Be warned though, it’s pretty 2000s-y with the techno soundtrack, frosted hair and one particular scene involving terrible looking CGI.

The movie this was based on is another matter however.  And I hesitate to even call it a “movie”.  The original Gone in 60 Seconds was a passion project of mechanic/stunt man H.B. Halicki.  He wrote, produced, directed and starred in what was meant to be a showcase of his skills as a stunt driver.  The last forty mins (the entire second half of the picture) is dedicated to a monster car chase that goes all over southern California and Halicki smashes the shit out of the ’73 yellow Ford Mustang he zooms around in.  The chase goes on for so long, so many cop cars get involved and his car gets so beat up it becomes reminiscent of the epic Blues Brothers chase.

The large scope of the sequence becomes a double edged sword though.  Yea it’s impressive as hell with all the near misses, direct hits and nightmare of logistics that must’ve been involved.  Plus these cars are really going 80-100 mph and boy does it look dangerous.  But it’s so lengthy and repetitive that it gets boring.  There’s one particular stretch in the middle where Halicki is driving around in a dirt field for what feels like forever.

Aside from the car chase stuff there really isn’t anything else going on.  It’s a very cheap B movie with the entire budget going to the finale.  For what’s supposed to be the narrative Halicki uses this bizarre technique of putting dialogue from a scene over a montage of other unrelated footage.  Any scrap of info we’re supposed to pick up comes from these voiceovers but the mismatched visual is unnecessarily confusing and makes paying attention difficult. 

There’s also the usual shit of poorly recorded audio, out of focus shots, shots that are so dark you can’t make anything out and atrocious acting. 

On top of this the soundtrack and some sound effects couldn’t be used beyond the original VHS release due to rights issues.  So different more modern music was used for any version after that (the one I saw) creating another layer to the mess.

But the idea of stealing a load of pricey cars (forty eight here), the scene where they boost a car with drugs in it and a cop shows up to snoop around right at that moment, giving the cars women’s names and Eleanor being the last car they steal which is also used for the ending chase are all established here.  The merry band of thieves with a code is part of this version as well.  These guys don’t take any car that isn’t insured.  In fact when they discover they’ve mistakenly pinched one that’s uninsured they return it and look for another.

All the cars are stolen in just a few seconds though.  Much less than the advertised 60.  That could be a positive or a gyp depending on how you look at it.

So unless you’re extremely curious to check out the whole film I’d say just watch the forty min ending (you won’t be lost or have missed anything that great, I promise).  The remake is definitely the better of the two.  It takes the few tiny kernels that Halicki had and grows them into a real full blown movie.  And I almost forgot to mention it has a serious Tony Scott (The Fan, True Romance, The Hunger) vibe.  But former music video director Dominic Sena (Janet Jackson, Fleetwood Mac, Sting, Sheena Easton, Kalifornia, Swordfish, Season of the Witch) did the deed.  I bet if you weren’t sold on it before you are now.