Film Review: ‘Need for Speed’ The stunts are spectacular and mostly real, while the characters expendable in this muscle-car epic. Many People, like myself, love a good car movie... For those of you out there, you will see a nod to many great classics like Bullitt (68), Vanishing Point (71), Smokey & the Bandit (77) and even Gone in 60 Seconds (74) To say that “Need for Speed” is one of the better movies derived from a video game source may not sound like much of an endorsement given the competition, but it’s an apt description of this mash note to the American muscle car in which high-flying stuntwork routinely trumps plot, and plausibility but as long as the engines are humming and the gears are grinding — which is most of the time — “Need” is modest and fun. I am a huge fan of all the Need For Speed video game. I have played every version. This film did justice to the games. Fans of the game will notice many similarities lifted straight from the small screen. Because the “Need for Speed” games, of which there have been 20 different installments since 1994, don’t really offer much in the way of narrative, director Scott Waugh (“Act of Valor”) and screenwriters George and John Gatins are pretty much starting from scratch here. They have, in turn, created a self-conscious, 1950s hot-rod/greaser throwback plunking us down in the kind of pastoral small-town America where people talk of “the big city” as if it can only be reached by arduous overland journey, and where ruddy-cheeked youths gather on summer nights at the local drive-in theater (where “Bullitt” is either enjoying a reissue, or has simply been playing continuously for the past 45 years). I half expected James Dean and Sal Mineo to enter at any moment, but instead we get Tobey Marshall (Aaron Paul), a youth stock-car prodigy who now runs a local custom auto shop, and his best bud, Pete, who’s also called “Little Pete,” and whose sensitive, childlike demeanor tells us from the start that he’s doomed to meet an untimely end. Tobey, by contrast, is built Ford-tough, and Paul plays the part with the flinty, tightly wound charisma of a small man who makes up in moxie what he lacks in stature. There’s something of the young James Cagney in him, and he’s by far the best thing “Need for Speed” has going for it. In a mildly refreshing change-up from the American action-movie norm, Paul is surrounded by an ensemble of similarly small-to-medium-sized gearheads who, collectively, might equal one Vin Diesel or the Rock. They include the wiry, bug-eyed Rami Malek (as a mechanic who gives his cubicle-dwelling day job an exuberant kiss-off), and hip-hop star Scott Mescudi as a wise-cracking Army Reserve pilot who improbably pops up in a variety of civilian and military aircraft throughout the movie, lending the racers eagle-eyed air support whenever they seem to require it. With his slick pompadour and cocksure strut, Dominic Cooper is nearly a caricature of wanton privilege as Dino Brewster, the hometown boy turned NASCAR pro, newly back in town with Pete’s sister Anita, who happens to be Tobey’s former high-school flame, on his arm. Dino has come into possession of the prototype 50th-anniversary Ford Mustang that legendary designer Carroll Shelby was working on at the time of his death in 2012. He has a British buyer on the line for a cool $3 million, and he proposes to hire Tobey and company to finish building the car in exchange for a cut of the sale. But Dino has a few dirtier tricks up his sleeve, too. After the Mustang is built and the sale is done, he challenges Tobey and Pete to a winner-takes-all road race in three identical, street-illegal Swedish Koenigsegg supercars. Resembling sleeker, more aerodynamic Batmobiles, the Koenigseggs look like trouble, and prove to be just that for Pete, in what is certainly one of the most spectacular aerial car flips ever captured on film. The vicarious thrill-making of that scene and others that show drivers racing in excess of 100 miles per hour through crowded city streets can’t help but hit a slightly queasy note arriving barely three months after the death of Paul Walker. Then again, it’s hard to shake the feeling that “Need for Speed” is a movie Walker himself would have very much enjoyed. Framed by Dino for Pete’s death, Tobey does his time and emerges two years later with revenge on his mind. At which point “Need for Speed” evolves into a kind of “Cannonball Run”, with Tobey hightailing it from New York to San Francisco to compete against Dino in the Super Bowl of illegal street racing, the De Leon. His car of choice: the custom Mustang, whose owner agrees to lend it on the condition that his associate Julia (Imogen Poots) travels with it. The tart, spunky Poots has some fun playing a woman for whom the sound of grinding gears is close to a mating call, but make no mistake: The true romance here is that of man and machine, as Tobey races against the clock, the cops and some high-octane bounty hunters dispatched by Dino. NFS draws heavily on practical special effects with a minimum of CGI. That includes the Mustang’s gravity-defying, 160-foot leap across multiple lanes of downtown traffic. The rest of the time NFS keeps the screen busy with lots of fancy driving shot from a battery of dizzying but never disorienting angles. When we finally get to San Francisco, the De Leon almost feels like an anticlimax. But there is an oasis of private amusement waiting in the form of Michael Keaton as the Monarch, mythic impresario of the De Leon, who beams his rhythmic color commentary over the Internet from an undisclosed locale, working himself into flurries of manic intensity as he goes. It’s a tailor-made role for the sly, inventive and chronically underrated Keaton, and he does much to guide “Need for Speed” ably across the finish line. A majority of the car stunts in the film were done practically using car shells, with hardly any VFX used. The body shell for the Konigsegg, a $4.6 million supercar, cost roughly $300,000. Executive producer Steven Spielberg was binge watching Breaking Bad and decided along with the director that Aaron Paul shouldnt play the villain, but the lead instead. Aaron Paul said during an interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live. According to director Scott Waugh, the cast all took stunt driving lessons. In the scene where Toby returns to Little Petes crashed car, Aaron Paul repeatedly skidded 15 short of his mark because he was afraid of hitting the director, who was filming the shot. Waugh told Paul to TRY to hit him. Waugh had someone holding his belt, and told him to pull him out of the way, but only if he was hit. Paul did the shot on the next take, coming within 2 of hitting the camera. In one continuous take, the Koenigsegg does a 4 wheel drift right up to the camera, with a closeup of Aaron Pauls face in the window, then Paul jumping out of the car.
Posted on: Sat, 15 Mar 2014 06:03:34 +0000
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