Review of Need for Speed (2014) by Gamed2Long — 22 Mar 2014

This movie was better than alright. Not quite "good" though.

The good: Aaron Paul. He's got a lot of stupid lines to deliver in this movie, but with his subtle tormented acting style not one of them comes off sounding cheesy or forced. That he can make such terrible writing sound organic is worthy of some kind of award.

Imogen Poots. She is a believable person and real sparks are bouncing between her and Aaron Paul, even if her character is completely ridiculous. If only I had a friend who would pay me 3 million dollars to build an uber car and then be willing to loan the finished product back to me!

The bad: The plot. It was so predictable it may even have been ripped off from another racing movie. Don't get me wrong. There are individual pieces of it that are good. The part in the convince store for instance. That sequence is, in itself, quite effective. And there are other bits of the film like that. Its that the over-arching plot is so dumb and predictable. The villain is so bland and one dimensional I don't even recall his name. He was just rich douche in leather coat. Its refreshing the main character has an entire team of people helping him race, but not one of them is memorable or really original. Or likable for that matter. We are supposed to accept that these monkeys are car mechanic/support crew extraordinaire and I don't even think we ever see one of them so much as holding a wrench. Probably because it would look so unnatural.

The ugly: Car wrecks! Car wrecks everywhere! OK this is a reason to see the film. Unlike the Fast and the Furious franchise Need For Speed was shot with a minimum of CGI special effects. They used as many conventional effects as they could pull off. And you can tell. When a window gets smashed for a scene the stunt glass is still there in the next. Still looking real. The car crashes, with one fireball exception, all look real. Vehicle damage and driving physics is believable and consistent throughout. And the world it is set in. Its not sanitized in the way Fast and Furious has become. When they force a car to run into the ditch because they are doing something very illegal, speeding the wrong way down a freeway for instance, you get the feeling whoever was in that car got hurt.

You very much get the sensation in this film that the cops are not just bitter old men trying to stop fun, but rather actually trying to protect the public from the colossal amount of damage these street racers cause.

Basically it comes down to this. If you are a big fan of car chase and car racing films then you can't miss out on this gem. If you are looking for something with character development and a plot that makes sense, you can find more of that in a single episode of Braking Bad. You're better off watching that.