NEED FOR SPEED needs more speed
I feel like I am the ideal person to review Need for Speed. I grew up on a diet of Hal Needham’s wonderful films, along with the obligatory Bullitt and Vanishing Point viewings on home video. I’ve also played most of the Need for Speed games, which have so graciously lent their name to this film. I also make no secret of my unabashed love for the modern day Fast and Furious franchise, which doubtlessly inspired some Hollywood suits to fund this Aaron Paul vehicle. Oh yeah, and I drive a Ford Mustang, the vehicle most prominently featured in product placement during the film.
So it was with much excitement that I donned my 3D glasses for this movie, and buckled up for its daunting 130 minute runtime. Our film follows Tobey Marshall (Aaron Paul), a small time speed shop owner and amateur racer, on a quest for revenge against Dino Brewster (Dominic Cooper), the pro race car driver also from Tobey’s hometown of Mount Kisco.
The film laboriously sets the scene over the first 20 minutes before sticking our hero and villain, and our hero’s best friend, into a high stakes illegal street race in identical Koeneggsegg Agera R supercars. Things end badly for Tobey and his friend, and Tobey does hard time for a couple of years. When he gets out, Tobey is hungry for vengeance, and a lot more racing. Tobey means to exact his revenge by participating in the invitation-only Deleon race, which is hosted by mysterious-lighthouse-dwelling-benefactor, Monarch (Michael Keaton). Keaton’s role in this film is basically as unnecessary narrator. He’s clearly a tip of the hat to Vanishing Point, but despite his vocal histrionics, he isn’t much of a match for Cleavon Little’s Super Soul.
Before Tobey can even start his race, he has to get from New York to California in his race car, a customized Shelby Mustang on loan from some rich dude. The catch is it also comes with said rich guy’s smarty-pants assistant Julia, who is fetchingly played by Imogen Poots. Julia is there to watch over rich guy’s multi-million dollar, 900 horsepower mustang (seems a tad overpriced, just saying) as Tobey drives it maniacally cross country, hoping to catch the eye of Monarch with his automotive hoonery. They overcome many obstacles, and make it to California just in time for the big race.
The best I can say for this movie is that it feels like director Scott Waugh likes the same things I do, and that he did his level best to make movie that would appeal to fans of gasoline-fueled mayhem. The movie was allegedly made without the use of CG in the car action scenes, which was to me the main selling point of the whole thing. Indeed the movie seems free of such fakery. The cars are lovingly shot from many angles, inside and out, and compared to the movies which inspired this film, the action on display is pretty staggeringly awesome. Unfortunately, we’ve come to expect rather a lot from other modern car chase movies which do take advantage of the shortcuts and more mind-blowingly impossible stunts that computer generated imagery can provide. So it doesn’t really look bad in any way, it’s just all bit boring compared to tanks running over cars and Vin Diesel flying through the air rescuing his lady love. The 3D post-conversion was competently done, but the accompanying lack of brightness, and quick camera moves during fast action end up causing the film to look a little choppy.
Where the wheels really do come off is during the stultifying minutes between the car bits when Aaron Paul is trying to play the strong and silent type but coming off a bit slight and sullen. He has a posse of buddies to help keep the film light and funny, and that sort of works, particularly in Benny’s and Finn’s (agreeably played by Scott “Kid Cudi” Mescudi and Rami Malek) better scenes. But mainly this film feels long. Really, really, really long. I’m not going to play editor here, but even the casual viewer will feel like this stretches out for an eternity. Despite featuring a bevy of supercars, the movie ends up feeling cheap with terrible covers of Aerosmith’s “Back in the Saddle Again” and possibly the worst cover of “All Along the Watchtower” I’ve ever encountered. Fortunately the sound effects are excellent, and the cars all sound as powerful and menacing as they should.
There are several flaws in this production, but perhaps the biggest is product placement. The most obvious is that of the Ford Mustang, which arguably can be forgiven, as someone had to pay for all of this. Less forgivable is that the final race was ripped directly from the actual Need for Speed video games. It is just as lengthy, tedious, and generic as that now-stagnant gaming franchise, and it makes me wonder if maybe the director did too good a job of interpreting his source material.
