Review of Need for Speed (2014) by Movie K — 10 Sep 2016

It shouldn't be this hard to make a Need for Speed movie. The video game franchise the movie is based on is largely story-less: it's all high-octane street races and police chases in souped up sports cars of all kinds. The main problem with Need for Speed, at least for the first act, is the way it takes the story very seriously, as opposed to the over-the-top video games. Aaron Paul leads the pack as Toby Marshall, a former racer (who is the best, of course) who is pulled back into the world of street racing when his young protege is killed by his rival (Dominic Cooper). All of the characters that are set up aren't particularly likeable, and have no character traits outside of your standard cookie-cutter tropes. It's hard to find any attachment to these characters as they arrogantly race their fancy sports cars in scenes that lack a sense of levity and showcase a disregard for everyone else on the road.

Things start to pick up in the second act, but only at the expense of the racing focus of the Need for Speed video games being swapped out for what's essentially a road movie more than anything. The movie completely loses sight of its source material, and considering its the most prevalent section of the film, the Need for Speed namesake almost becomes questionable, and yet, the film finally becomes a bit enjoyable in this section of the movie. It's an odd juxtaposition that makes the film suffer from an identity crisis of sorts. This act, however, does introduce who is truly the savior of the film: the always lovely Imogen Poots, playing car broker Julia. Poots infuses a lot of charm into her character, while also giving her tiny but admirable character quirks that maker her character feel the most relatable among the rest of the cast. The rest of the cast does have more to do here, and their comedic personalities are highlighted at least a little more than before. While they have literally no impact on the plot, scenes like the one in which Rami Malek strips naked as he quits his job are oddly amusing.

The car chases also finally embrace their absurdity in this portion of the film. While the disregard for everyone else on the road is still there, the way the chases were filmed using mostly practical effects and actual car crashes is actually quite refreshing. Each car crash feels real because, for the most part, they are real. There's an occasional use of CGI fire that is distracting, but the rest of the time, the crashes are quite visceral. The final race that the film concludes with, including the presence of police, feels like it was ripped right out of one of the games. By this point though, the film has been all over the place tonally and narratively, and the ending just can't pack enough of a punch to propel this movie to anything further than a by-the-numbers action racing flick.