Gone in 60 Seconds Reviews

A cynical, glossy remake of an obscure '70s cult item (a shoddy piece of filmmaking attached to a jaw-dropping, 40-minute car chase) and the epitome of filmmaking by the manual. This is a movie machine with all the moving parts on the outside, clicking and spinning and humming so vigorously that you might be hypnotized into thinking it's fun. Reformed car thief Randall "Memphis" Raines (Nicolas Cage) now runs a desert service station and supervises go-cart races. That is, until he hears that little brother Kip (Giovanni Ribisi) is in trouble; Kip tried to follow in Memphis's light-fingered footsteps, but screwed up a big job for a psycho named Ray Calitri (Christopher Eccleston). If big brother doesn't do something, Kip is roadkill. "Something" turns out to be grand theft auto on an especially grand scale: Fifty high-end cars in four days: Porsches, Jaguars, Ferraris and Aston Martins. So Memphis reassembles the old gang — mentor Otto (Robert Duvall), pals Donny (Chi McBride) and Sphinx (Vinnie Jones), ex-girlfriend Sway (Angelina Jolie) — and gets down to the business of boosting cars and dodging cops (Delroy Lindo, Timothy Olyphant) and crooks (led by Master P) who resent the competition. This soulless demolition derby takes two things from the original: the multicar, time-sensitive heist and the gimmick of code-naming the vehicles after girls — the coveted Shelby Mustang GT 500, for example, is Eleanor. Pains have been taken to pretend the story is character-driven, but the "characters" are just collections of tics and pro forma backstory; only Jolie and Jones (of LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS), who come equipped with charisma to burn, make any real impression. And the car stunts are ridiculous, all lightning-fast editing and computer enhancement — by the time action is this far removed from reality, who cares? — Maitland McDonagh