NEED FOR SPEED Movie Review
The most ironic thing about Need For Speed would be the fact that at 130 minutes, this movie moves at a sluggish pace. The plot is your standard revenge tale that can fit on the back of a cocktail napkin, which is why the first half hour is padded with a set up that’s irrelevant to the story, other than attempting to create empathy and characters that will service the main character’s motivations for travelling to the opposite side of the country, another excuse to fill up an unjustified running time as the story here barely has legs to stand on as it is. Aaron Paul, fresh off the amazing Breaking Bad, plays Tobey Marshall, a a blue-collar mechanic who’s struggling financially and is offered a chance to win some big money by competing in a street race against greedy entrepreneur, Dino Brewster portrayed by the shamefully under-utilized Dominic Cooper.
Dominic Cooper is a promising talent that is criminally given an underdeveloped role, especially considering he’s the villain. A tragic incident places Tobey wrongfully behind bars and conveniently after his release, he is given the chance to avenge the crime that he didn’t commit by you guessed it, entering another illegal race. An exotic car dealer (Imogen Poots) accompanies Tobey across the country to California to enter the race in 45 hours and it feels every second of it. Michael Keaton is oddly cast as the reclusive and unhinged host of the “underground” race and despite giving his best try to giving an eccentric performance, it comes off as poorly written and out of place, only dragging the pace further. Scott Mescudi aka Kid Cudi is meant to be the main comic relief, but unfortunately fails on all cylinders to elicit anything that doesn’t come off as contrived due to the contrived dialogue courtesy of George Gatins’ amateurish script.
Filmmaker Scott Waugh (Act Of Valor) had the odds stacked against him with a script that’s indecisive and never commit to anything, but that doesn’t excuse the horrible editing decisions that magnify the shortcomings that this story offers. One of the main things that the Fast & Furious franchise gets absolutely right, is understanding that momentum is absolutely crucial to the success of it’s formula. There’s some crisp and adrenaline fueled cinematography displayed by Shane Hurlbut (Terminator: Salvation), though the race scenes that are the only thing that justify this film’s existence are disappointingly short and barely in the movie and the set-pieces lack ambition, however they did go with the decision to use real cars. What’s surprisingly mind boggling is the decision for Aaron Paul to give a sedative performance that defies charisma at any hope of every angle, it’s almost as if he realized the mistake he made after signing up for this and hoped he would barely get noticed. The inconsistency of character traits in Tobey completely erase any hope for credibility as we see his heroic act to help the undeserved after countless innocent casualties have been wiped clear off the road to their probable deaths.
If you had any hope for this feature to undo the horrible reputation of video game-adapted movies, I’m afraid you’re out of luck but don’t worry they’ll keep trying. Maybe some day Hollywood will figure out that the key to making quality films based on existing franchises with a built in fan-base, would be to not have a condescending attitude towards the material and get the talent behind that understands the material.
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