Review of Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000) by Filipeneto — 03 Apr 2018

Movies about cops and robbers are a classic theme of cinema. The organized crime, in turn, is an undesirable reality. This film is excellent when trying to portray the methodical way in which these thieves act, even from a pure and unpretentious fiction film, which doesn't want to be an artwork but merely entertain its audience and give us good action moments. Pursuits that look like street racing, shootings, almost-ruthless bandits, resolute policemen and a good guy trying to help his troubled brother. Oh, and Angelina Jolie playing a character who takes advantage of her physical attributes.

The script, of H. B. Halicki and Scott Rosenberg, has nothing extraordinary except the huge amount of cars to steal. But the script falls into an error of many theft films by making the thief a true hero. Memphis Raines (Nicolas Cage) is a retired thief who is forced to steal to save his brother. He acknowledges that is wrong and tries to prevent his brother from stealing but, if we exclude this ideas, the rest of the film is like a "glorification" of car theft. At this point, the script needed to have been amended. I think this film could be more interesting with some more profound psychological conflicts surrounding that, and that troubled familiar relationship. Our society is quite degraded today, why not explore the conflict "good vs. evil" in another way, instead of making the street villains the good guys? The film has two very good things. First, it has a star cast led by Nicolas Cage, Angelina Jolie, Robert Duvall, Giovanni Ribisi, Christopher Eccleston, among others honorable names. A cast too good for this kind of movie. Maybe the film would gain if the director and the writers had been more demanding with the actors, pushing them to their best and allow them to explore the full potential of each character, but this did not happened. For example, Jolie's character simply does not make any honor to her talent. Its just body. Second, the action scenes. Some of these are classical, but are always well, and the visual and sound effect make them even better.