REVIEW BY BURL BURLINGAME / Special to the Star-Advertiser
The cars are beautiful, in a slot-car sort of way. They roar and race and hurtle with joyful abandon. That’s kind of cool. They’re hurtling all the way across the United States, and the states flow by like a painted backdrop. Everybody loves a Ford Mustang in full growl.
This is “Smokey and the Bandit” territory, and they even call the highway police “smokies” here, which is just plain pop-deconstructive hipsterism at its worst.
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‘NEED FOR SPEED’Rated PG-13Now playing |
Oh yeah, the plot.
I mean, “the plot.”
Aaron Paul, the littlest weasel from “Breaking Bad,” plays a young man with racing potential, who threw it all away for … well, it’s not really explained. He has a childhood sweetie, who’s shacked up with a childhood racing rival (Dominic Cooper, a unibrow actor), and for some reason, they bet their cars and their lives on a secret race called the De Leon, which is masterminded by an underground-internet disk jockey called The Monarch (Michael Keaton, having a blast).
And that’s pretty much it. Paul’s character has to cross the U.S. in 48 hours, aided by a ragtag band of buddies in trucks and light aircraft (which have no trouble keeping up with Paul’s 200-mph Mustang, oddly) and well as a British crumpet (Imogen Poots) in the shotgun seat.
It all reminds me of the cult movie “Vanishing Point,” back in 1971. In fact, the town of Cisco plays a big part in “Vanishing Point,” and Mt. Kisco plays a big part in “Need For Speed.” Coincidence? Or just japery? And in “Vanishing Point,” lead actor Barry Newman had a need for speed. As in benzedrine.
“Need For Speed” is actually based on a best-selling video game, and it certainly has video-game tropes throughout. Video-game players may feel their thumbs reacting unconsciously.
The immediate point, however, is that it positions Aaron Paul as a potential movie actor, and he manages to make us forget “Breaking Bad.” Good for him. As a couple, Paul and Poots, however, resemble nothing so much as couple of bobble-head dolls. Seriously. Their heads are the size of the cases real heads come in.
