Gone In 60 Seconds
Holdin’ On To Nothin’ But The Wheel
The scene in Gone In 60 Seconds that really hooked me was a disquisition on contract law, of all things. Bad guy Christopher Eccleston has a contract with car thief Giovanni Ribisi. Ribisi must deliver 50 primo stolen cars by 8 a.m. Monday in order to earn $200,000. Ribisi gets a $10,000 advance to help him along. Unfortunately, while stealing a Porsche from a showroom floor, Ribisi attracts the attention of the police. He escapes arrest, but the cops capture and impound the cars he’s stolen so far.
In walks Nicolas Cage, Ribisi’s big brother and retired master car thief. Cage recognizes that the contract is in breach. He offers the equitable remedy of recission. In recission, the parties revert to status quo ante, and Cage offers Eccleston his $10,000 back. Eccleston rejects the offer, instead requiring specific performance. Cage must complete the terms of the contract and deliver the cars in four days. Contract law generally doesn’t require specific performance, you understand, but Eccleston has some leverage; if Cage doesn’t come through, his brother will be killed.
(I hate to use the word “leverage” after what Travolta did to it in Battlefield Earth, but it was appropriate. Sorry.)
As a way to open a movie, this isn’t as snappy as Tom Cruise standing on a big rock and throwing his sunglasses away before they explode. That is of no consequence. Gone In 60 Seconds is the movie that Mission Impossible 2 should have been. You have an impossible mission, a master criminal, a gang of experts, an evil, preening bad guy, and an action-filled climax worthy of the great Jerry Bruckheimer.
The mission is harder than it looks. Cage and his cohorts are given a list of 50 cars to steal, all of them honeys. This is vitally important to the movie. Cage and his merry band aren’t just stealing Honda Accords and Toyota Tercels and Chevy Cavaliers for parts. Cage and his crew have to be likeable, and there’s nothing likeable about your average, run-of-the-mill car thief. Car thieves hurt people and drive up all our auto insurance premiums. Cage, however, is stealing expensive toys from rich people; often, toys that the rich people aren’t even playing with. All of us, in a place deep down in our hearts, can’t help but smile when we see someone stealing a symbol of conspicuous consumption like a Cadillac SUV or a new Ferrari. (Gone In 60 Seconds handles this so well that, when I got out of the theater, it was all I could do to keep from stealing the Lexus SUV parked next to me, or at least keying the paint.)
After three huge duds — the mind-blowingly awful Snake Eyes, the Schumacheresque 8MM, and Scorcese’s Bringing Out The Dead — Cage needs a huge hit here, and he scores big-time. He’s got the black leather jacket and the black designer T-shirt and when he sits behind the wheel of a classic car, he’s the epitome of cool. My guess is that Cage figured that he needed to do a movie that was less about acting and more about style; and in that, he succeeds brilliantly.
The only problem with Gone In 60 Seconds is that there’s a long takeoff for a short flight. The movie spends a little too long on the problems of recruiting assistant car thieves, with both Robert Duvall and Angelina Jolie appearing in scenes where they initially decline to get involved, but show up later anyway. (This is too bad, really, because neither one of them is actually featured much in the movie. The real showstopper of the car thieves is the hilarious Chi McBride, seen most prominently on the John Larroquette TV show.) There’s a lot of time spent on Delroy Lindo’s policeman character, and his attempts to thwart the mission. There’s a lot of time spent riding around, taking pictures of cars that the gang is planning to steal. (And a good thing, too, as it turns out.)
Most of the car thefts go off smoothly, with more emphasis on gadgets than action. That is, at least, until Cage steps behind the wheel of his beloved Shelby GT 500 Mustang and launches one of the damndest chase scenes since the hallowed Speed. Everything about this movie is about that chase, which involves Cage chasing both the cops and the clock to deliver the last of the stolen cars to the pier on time.
There’s a perfectly awful Standard Hollywood Ending following the chase scene that involves a deserted factory and a high catwalk, but you can ignore that. You can ignore lots about this movie, but you can’t ignore its final distillation; a man driving a car really, really fast, with people chasing him. Gone In 60 Seconds is, to paraphrase the Patti Loveless song, about nothin’ but the wheel. That’s plenty.