Need for Speed

Given that the Fast and Furious franchise continues to strike box office gold with each sequel, it's no wonder why a studio would want to get in on the success with their own variation.  Hence, we have Dreamworks and Touchstone's Need for Speed, a live action take of a popular video game series.  For a Fast and Furious knock off, this will do, I guess.  Faint praise, to be sure.  The racing scenes are actually quite good, and shot in such a way that it's easy to follow the action.  But the weak plot and characters, dumb dialogue, and a bloated running time work against what could have been a really fun guilty pleasure.

Our hero is a brooding racer named Toby (Aaron Paul), who has a lot of problems as the film opens.  His dad recently died, he's in danger of losing his family garage and custom car service to massive debt, and his ex-girlfriend (who he's still in love with) is with the slimy professional racer, Dino (Dominic Cooper).  We instantly know that Dino is the villain because of his slicked black hair, constant sneer, and the fact that he "sold out" and went pro after years of being an illegal street racer.  The movie wastes too much time setting up the rivalry between Toby and Dino, when all we want to see is the racing.  When the two finally do compete against each other (with one of Toby's young friends also competing in the race), Dino causes a car crash which kills Toby's friend, and then speeds off, leaving Toby alone to take the blame when the police arrive. 

Flash forward two years later, and Toby's out on parole with revenge on his mind.  He knows that Dino is going to be competing in an illegal street race on the West Coast that is held every year by the mysterious Monarch (Michael Keaton).  Seeing Keaton playing a character who literally does nothing but sit at a desk and commentate on the action is probably the best example of wasted talent I've seen in a while.  Toby decides to make the journey from New York to California, so he can compete against his rival.  Along the way, he's teamed up with an obligatory love interest, played quite likably by Imogen Poots.  I liked Poots a lot in the last film I saw her in, too (last month's That Awkward Moment), and hope she gets some better scripts soon, as she's too good to be tossed aside in these kind of movies.  As our heroes make their way cross country to compete in the big race, we slowly realize that not much is happening, and the movie could have easily been trimmed to a lean 90 minutes with little sacrifice.  Instead, it clocks in at a far too long 130 minutes.

Even if the overlong and uneven pacing knocks Need for Speed down quite a bit, we can see glimpses of a fun movie throughout.  The stunt driving is pulled off well, and seems to rely on practical effects, instead of CG.  The editing on the racing is also clean, so we can constantly keep track on what's happening.  This is a huge relief after witnessing the last car-based action film I saw, Getaway, which was edited so rapidly you could hardly tell what you were supposed to be looking at.  The driving sequences are obviously the main selling point of the film, so we have to wonder why the movie makes us wait so long to get to them.  Are we really supposed to get behind these thinly written characters, whose personalities could probably be written out on a small scrap of paper?  Apparently we are, as the filmmakers stop the action to focus on them, while never making a big case as to why we're supposed to care about them.

With a tighter focus on the action, I could forgive the movie for its lame characters, and even occasional glaring continuity problems. (At one point, one of Toby's friends quits his job by taking off all his clothes, and walking through the office complex naked.  Yet, seconds after leaving the building and getting in another character's car, he's suddenly dressed again.) I mean, heck, I've been able to find enjoyment in some of the Fast and Furious films, because they have a winning formula of action and characters that have some kind of chemistry together.  There's none of that in Need for Speed.  As a hero, Toby is largely a brooding dullard, and his rivalry with the evil Dino is never as strong as it should be.  It never feels like its driving the action, like it should be.  Instead, the movie meanders - It throws a few police car chases at us from time to time, but it does little to distract how little there is going on within the film.

I would classify Need for Speed as a movie that does work when it's doing what it's supposed to be doing, but spends far too much time avoiding what does work.  I think with another trip or two to the editing room, this could have been a fun little movie.  As it is, it's bloated, and only fun in bits and pieces.

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