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  Richard
  
Attwood
Gone in 60 Seconds
USA, 2000
[Dominic Sera]
Nicholas Cage, Angelina Jolie, Delroy Lindo, Robert Duvall, Giovanni Ribisi
Action / Crime
  
Producer Jerry Bruckheimer who, along with his long-time collaborator Don Simpson was chief purveyor of the high concept brand of moviemaking, brings us his seemingly annual mix of big explosions and big melodrama in the shape of this tale of carjacking and brotherly love. The quality of Bruckheimer's output is patchy at best so, coming off the back of the hugely disappointing Con Air and Armageddon, does Gone in 60 Seconds go any way towards salvaging his reputation as the king of action movies?

Well, no to be frank. For a film that relies entirely on car theft for its adrenaline supply there is really only one car chase of note and that offers nothing original or in the least bit exciting, even the requisite stunt jump desn't actually show the Mustang clearing any cars. As for the storyline of expert car thief 'Memphis' Raines (Cage) having to come out of retirement to save his brother Kip's (Ribisi) life by stealing 50 cars in three days, it really will have you feeling nauseous at the sledgehammer approach taken by the writers to create any kind of emotion or tension; humour is attempted in a smilarly fumbling manner. Even the cars, of which there are some absolutely mouth watering models to be stolen, are given short shrift with hardly any screen time devoted to appreciating their majesty. Come to think of it - with such barren script, sparse action and brief autoeroticism, what on earth was the running time made up of?

The entire cast seem to be going through the motions, which given the material they were faced with is understandable really (even the character names are contrived), and Angelina Jolie proves yet again that while being one of the most promising (and sexiest) of Hollywood's stars ascendant, she really needs to refine her project choices if she is to truly get anywhere. While not being the final nail in the Bruckheimer coffin, he must quickly realise that audiences today want something more innovative and subtle nowadays or he risks being left in his popcorn saturated heyday of postage stamp scripts and shameless sensationalism.
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