“Gone in Sixty Seconds” opens with a boast and a countdown. Memphis Raines, played by Nicolas Cage, is an ex-car thief pulled back into the life when his brother Kip, played by Giovanni Ribisi, botches a boost. The debt now belongs to crime boss Raymond Calitri, played by Christopher Eccleston, and the price is fifty cars in a handful of nights.
Trailer, via George M.c.
Memphis Raines and the Fifty Cars
The setup is clean and old as dirt. A retired pro, a reckless kid brother, a crime boss with a deadline. Director Dominic Sena and writer Scott Rosenberg do not pretend this is anything else. They lay out the rules and let the engines run.
Cage plays Memphis with a sleepy drawl and a bad haircut, a man who would rather be anywhere else. That works. The film is best when it treats the job as a trade, not a thrill.
The crew is the film’s real engine:
- Robert Duvall as Otto Halliwell, the old hand
- Angelina Jolie as Sara ‘Sway’ Wayland
- Delroy Lindo as Det. Roland Castlebeck
- Chi McBride as Donny Astricky
- Scott Caan as Tumbler
Each gets a beat, and most get only that. Duvall brings weight to Otto that the script does not earn. Lindo’s detective is the closest thing to a real antagonist with a badge.
What the Chase Costs
The middle stretch sags. Fifty cars is a list, not a story, and the film keeps stopping to check items off. Timothy Olyphant’s Detective Drycoff and Will Patton’s Atley Jackson drift in and out without leaving a mark. The tagline promises ice cold and hot wired. The film delivers hot wired often and ice cold rarely.
Eccleston’s Calitri is the weak link. He is meant to be notorious, but he reads as a man in a nice coat who has seen too many crime films. The threat never lands, so the deadline never bites.
What works is the machinery. The chases are practical, loud and legible. Sena stages them so you can follow who is where and why it matters. That is rarer than it should be, and it is why the film still has a pulse.
The runtime is 118 minutes, and it feels it. Trim twenty and this is a tighter machine.
“Gone in Sixty Seconds” is a B-movie with an A-cast, and it knows it. The premise is thin, the villain is thinner, but the tradecraft and the chase work hold the thing together. It is not a good film. It is a watchable one, and sometimes that is enough.
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