I really love Piers Morgan!

Need for Speed

(2014)

(SPOILERS) The elusive potential goldmine that is the video game adaptation. How many have been a success? Critically, next to none. Commercially, the Resident Evil series is about it. There are the precious few first instalments that instilled apathy (Tomb Raider, Mortal Kombat), but the odds are seriously against any lucky feeling studio making any serious dough. That may change (there are several interesting names attached to several interesting projects) but it wont be this year. Need for Speed will probably make a profit when all’s told, but as an attempt to cash in on the success of the Fast & Furious franchise it fizzles, and as a prospective dumb-but-fun auto-racing movie it’s a dud.

I think it’s probably fair to suggest that the only way to approach a big cross-country pursuit movie is not to treat it entirely seriously, particularly since the scenario where taking off as an act of rebellion against society and the squares while dogged by the fuzz has long since lacked resonance (like, since the ‘70s). Director Scott Waugh seems oblivious to this, treating the whole affair with a crippling lack of levity (and what there is, is painfully forced).

A stunt co-ordinator turned director (his first was Act of Valor), Waugh knows where to put the camera (he’s especially fond of in-car shots –so you know the actors were really there!) but on this evidence he has problems editing his action together coherently. The results remind me of the choppy work that litters Simon West’s early career. Speaking of which, there are also attempts at Bruckheimer-esque rousing airborne panorama shots with that old favourite of the constantly moving camera; they’re passé though, aping older and better movies. The picture as a whole feels like everyone involved has been second-guessing, but that shouldn’t be a surprise given the abundance of missteps DreamWorks has made lately. Any given choice is likely to be a bad one, unless the ‘berg himself is involved.

His involvement here extended to picking Aaron Paul for the plum role of Tobey Marshall, a former racer out for revenge after old rival Dino Brewster (Dominic Cooper, knowing that the only thing to do with a role like his is relish the irredeemable villainy) not only gets his pal killed in an impromptu road race but lies about it to boot. Two years later, out of jail and on parole, Marshall assembles his old crew of garage buddies with a revenge plan that entails getting picked for the De Leon, a race organised by racing buff Monarch (Michael Keaton); the winner takes the other competitors’ cars (not much point if they’ve all crashed en route, I’d have thought). This requires attracting the requisite attention (and thus an invite from Monarch) and reaching the venue in a madcap 48-hour drive from New York to California.

Waugh’s decision to eschew CGI is admirable but, when a script is as wholly ludicrous as this one, attempts at realism are entirely misplaced. If you don’t play this knowingly, you look very silly and, with a grim-faced payback plot at the core, that’s exactly what Need for Speed quickly becomes. Instead of thriving on the clichés it exhumes, the movie is buried by them. There’s none of the infectious fun of the (best of the) Fast & Furious series, and the ensemble of Marshall’s helpers strain for absent chemistry and empty laughs (Harrison Gilbertson, Scott Mescudi, Ramon Rodriguez and an especially irritating Rami Malek; he wants to be exuberant and cheeky but is just loud and annoying).

There are attempts to circumnavigate the gross irresponsibility of these young hoodlums and then their petrol head antics – Mescudi provides an air spotting service to ensure members of the public don’t get run over – but it’s impossible to ignore the fact that pretty much everything that happens is a result of Tobey’s brashness and rashness. Yeah, Dino is a massive wanker, but Tobey continually rises to the bait. He gets involved in a business deal to rebuild a Ford Shelby Mustang when his chums warn him against it. And then, when he has his profit in the bag (assuming Dino doesn’t stiff him), he childishly risks everything to massage his ego and jumps into a race that results in one of his friends getting killed.

Later he unveils his plan to get even, but it’s unfathomable quite how he expects this to play out since everything that happens is either the result of Julia (Imogen Poots) rallying to his side or the result of enormously lucky coincidences (one of the cast even has to ask “Why wouldn’t he destroy it?” of the car Dino used to ram Tobey’s pal off the road; it’s the old “trick” of, if you’ve got a really, really, stupid plot development in store, draw attention to it in the hope audiences will just accept what’s in full view). Then, instead of having a sensibly recuperative night-in pre-race, and having antagonised Dino whom he knows is a psycho, Tobey goes out for a drive and acts surprised when someone puts him in a car wreck.

This might be less of a problem if Paul exuded anything but dead-eyed intensity. Spielberg liked him, as does everyone, for Breaking Bad, but on the evidence of this he doesn’t have what it takes as a leading man (which is fine, a good supporting actor often gets better parts). The danger is, Paul might end up being seen as one-trick pony. Can he play other types? Stony severity isn’t the boost this movie needed, and it’s left to both the Brits to take the acting honours.

There’s something a bit weasely about Cooper that makes him perfect for bad guys but unconvincing as heroes. He’s sensible enough to betray not an ounce of humanity as Dino (Dakota Johnson, who I understand is supposed to be a next big thing, barely registers as his girlfriend; also Tobey’s ex and the sister of the poor wee lamb who gone done and got blew up). The real star of the show is Poots, however, who has a habit of shining in less-than-sterling roles. She turns the posh “tart” (as Monarch calls her) role to her advantage, and ekes a fair degree of amusement playing off Paul’s impassive petulance. She also inspires a line no one would countenance on this side of the Atlantic (one would hope for better across the Pond too, and I’m going to charitably assume it was meant ironically); “I really love Piers Morgan!”

It’s the only memorable line here, with one caveat. The chases don’t linger in the mind either. There needed to be a Roscoe P Coltrane type in hot pur-suit of Tobey, rather than Waugh wasting time (this film is drastically over-long) on him driving the wrong way up streets or – almost, only almost, likeably stupid, since the amount of effort involved would have made it much quicker to stop for a couple of minutes – refuelling in transit. Nothing here is cool, and nor are any of the sequences suitably adrenalising. To misquote the estimable Point Break, Need is young, dumb, and... really dumb. Even with all the havoc and mayhem caused, all the lives endangered, and the ruination of homeless folks’ shopping trolleys, Tobey is such a wonderful chap that he saves Dino at a crucial moment. The problem isn’t that; it’s that there’s no spirit here, no joie de vivre. Tobey isn’t about a need for freedom and expressing his individuality; he’s all unrefined rictus rancor.

The races themselves – topping and tailing the movie - have little sense of route, geography or opponents (aside from Dino); the kind of fundamentals required to make such automotive antics engaging. Waugh must take the co-blame as co-editor. The cinematography is bold and bright, but wasted amid the general incoherence. The soundtrack is just a loud mess, which matches the general tone. The screenplay, credited to George Gatins, is telling his first (brother John gets a story credit; his past efforts include the poxy Real Steel and half decent Flight).

The caveat I mentioned earlier relates to Keaton, who is an incongruous kind of car enthusiast, but whose improv (“Racers should race, cops should eat donuts”) gives the picture a turbo charge whenever he appears – even if it’s just by way of voiceover. Keaton’s profile has lifted recently, which is long overdue. On this evidence (he’s also one of the better things in the Robocop remake) he’s in fine shape and of suitably quick mind should Beetlejuice 2 ever get off the ground.

Abandon selective targeting. Shoot everything.

28 Weeks Later (2007) (SPOILERS) The first five minutes of 28 Weeks Later are far and away the best part of this sequel, offering in quick succession a devastating moral quandary and a waking nightmare, immortalised on the screen. After that, while significantly more polished, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo reveals his concept to be altogether inferior to Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s, falling back on the crutches of gore, nihilism, and disengaging and limiting shifts of focus between characters in whom one has little investment in the first place.

The Bible never said anything about amphetamines.

The Color of Money (1986) (SPOILERS) I tend to think it’s evident when Scorsese isn’t truly exercised by material. He can still invest every ounce of the technical acumen at his fingertips, and the results can dazzle on that level, but you don’t really feel the filmmaker in the film. Which, for one of his pictures to truly carry a wallop, you need to do. We’ve seen quite a few in such deficit in recent years, most often teaming with Leo. The Color of Money , however, is the first where it was out-and-out evident the subject matter wasn’t Marty’s bag. He needed it, desperately, to come off, but in the manner a tradesman who wants to keep getting jobs. This sequel to The Hustler doesn’t linger in the mind, however good it may be, moment by moment.

Doctors make the worst patients.

Coma (1978) (SPOILERS) Michael Crichton’s sophomore big-screen feature, and by some distance his best. Perhaps it’s simply that this a milieu known to him, or perhaps it’s that it’s very much aligned to the there-and-now and present, but Coma , despite the occasional lapse in this adaptation of colleague Robin Cook’s novel, is an effective, creepy, resonant thriller and then some. Crichton knows his subject, and it shows – the picture is confident and verisimilitudinous in a way none of his other directorial efforts are – and his low-key – some might say clinical – approach pays dividends. You might also call it prescient, but that would be to suggest its subject matter wasn’t immediately relevant then too.

I said I had no family. I didn’t say I had an empty apartment.

The Apartment (1960) (SPOILERS) Billy Wilder’s romcom delivered the genre that rare Best Picture Oscar winner. Albeit, The Apartment amounts to a rather grim (now) PG-rated scenario, one rife with adultery, attempted suicide, prostitution of the soul and subjective thereof of the body. And yet, it’s also, finally, rather sweet, so salving the darker passages and evidencing the director’s expertly judged balancing act. Time Out ’s Tom Milne suggested the ending was a cop out (“ boy forgives girl and all’s well ”). But really, what other ending did the audience or central characters deserve?

Your desecration of reality will not go unpunished.

2021-22 Best-of, Worst-of and Everything Else Besides The movies might be the most visible example of attempts to cling onto cultural remnants as the previous societal template clatters down the drain. It takes something people really want – unlike a Bond movie where he kicks the can – to suggest the model of yesteryear, one where a billion-dollar grosser was like sneezing. You can argue Spider-Man: No Way Home is replete with agendas of one sort or another, and that’s undoubtedly the case (that’s Hollywood), but crowding out any such extraneous elements (and they often are) is simply a consummate crowd-pleaser that taps into tangible nostalgia through its multiverse take. Of course, nostalgia for a mere seven years ago, for something you didn’t like anyway, is a symptom of how fraught these times have become.

Listen to the goddamn qualified scientists!

Don’t Look Up (2021) (SPOILERS) It’s testament to Don’t Look Up ’s “quality” that critics who would normally lap up this kind of liberal-causes messaging couldn’t find it within themselves to grant it a free pass. Adam McKay has attempted to refashion himself as a satirist since jettisoning former collaborator Will Ferrell, but as a Hollywood player and an inevitably socio-politically partisan one, he simply falls in line with the most obvious, fatuous propagandising.

Captain, he who walks in fire will burn his feet.

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973) (SPOILERS) Ray Harryhausen returns to the kind of unadulterated fantasy material that made Jason and the Argonauts such a success – swords & stop motion, if you like. In between, there were a couple of less successful efforts, HG Wells adaptation First Men in the Moon and The Valley of the Gwangi (which I considered the best thing ever as a kid: dinosaur walks into a cowboy movie). Harryhausen’s special-effects supremacy – in a for-hire capacity – had also been consummately eclipsed by Raquel Welch’s fur bikini in One Million Years B.C . The Golden Voyage of Sinbad follows the expected Dynamation template – blank-slate hero, memorable creatures, McGuffin quest – but in its considerable favour, it also boasts a villainous performance by nobody-at-the-time, on-the-cusp-of-greatness Tom Baker.

Archimedes would split himself with envy.

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977) (SPOILERS) Generally, this seems to be the Ray Harryhausen Sinbad outing that gets the short straw in the appreciation stakes. Which is rather unfair. True, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger lacks Tom Baker and his rich brown voice personifying evil incarnate – although Margaret Whiting more than holds her own in the wickedness stakes – and the structure follows the Harryhausen template perhaps over scrupulously (Beverly Cross previously collaborated with the stop-motion auteur on Jason and the Argonauts , and would again subsequently with Clash of the Titans ). But the storytelling is swift and sprightly, and the animation itself scores, achieving a degree of interaction frequently more proficient than its more lavishly praised peer group.

You just threw a donut in the hot zone!

Den of Thieves (2018) (SPOILERS) I'd heard this was a shameless Heat rip-off, and the presence of Gerard Butler seemed to confirm it would be passable-at-best B-heist hokum, so maybe it was just middling expectations, even having heard how enthused certain pockets of the Internet were, but Den of Thieves is a surprisingly very satisfying entry in the genre. I can't even fault it for attempting to Keyser Soze the whole shebang at the last moment – add a head in a box and you have three 1995 classics in one movie – even if that particular conceit doesn’t quite come together.

You have a very angry family, sir.

Eternals (2021) (SPOILERS) It would be overstating the case to suggest Eternals is a pleasant surprise, but given the adverse harbingers surrounding it, it’s a much more serviceable – if bloated – and thematically intriguing picture than I’d expected. The signature motifs of director and honestly-not-billionaire’s-progeny Chloé Zhao are present, mostly amounting to attempts at Malick-lite gauzy natural light and naturalism at odds with the rigidly unnatural material. There’s woke to spare too, since this is something of a Kevin Feige Phase Four flagship, one that rather floundered, showcasing his designs for a nu-MCU. Nevertheless, Eternals manages to maintain interest despite some very variable performances, effects, and the usual retreat into standard tropes, come the final big showdown.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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