GONE IN 60 SECONDS (2000)

Fifty cars in 72 hours. That’s the gist of the whole movie.

Nicolas Cage is the greatest car thief in the known universe. But he’s retired. So, in order to pull off a needlessly overly complicated job in an unnecessarily short amount of time, gangster Christopher Eccleston threatens to force Cage’s lil’ brother, Giovanni Ribisi, to watch a Will Smith movie…or was it kill him? Hum, I can’t remember. Either way it’s a horrible punishment and Cage understands the seriousness of the situation. So, he assembles a too cool for skool group of forgettable dorks (and Robert Duvall) to help him steal 50 high-end whips in 72 hours. At the same time, there are two police detectives (Delroy Lindo and Timothy Olyphant) following leads and eventually discovering the invention of the blacklight.

GONE IN 60 SECONDS is an interesting callback to the dark days before the Fast & Furious movies and it helps me appreciate the series more than I already do. On paper, 60 Seconds has the ingredients for an awesome cheesy guilty pleasure fast car movie, but, sadly, it’s unable to turn those ingredients into an awesome movie. Instead, it’s just kinda…meh. There are no standout moments, the characters are all one-dimensional, the car chases are boring, the dialog is forgettable bland chatter, most of the acting is on cruise control and the entire look of the film is just off. Like why are all the daytime scenes so brown?

I've seen GONE IN 60 SECONDS a few times over the years and every single time I go into it hoping that it's gonna be awesome and that maybe last time I saw it I was wrong, but then I watch it and end up thinking "This is it?" It's disappointing because, beforehand, in my handsome brain I see this insanely awesome story full of colourful characters and badass action, but then the reality is a simplistic, by-the-numbers car chase movie...with boring car chases. Overall, it's a watchable film, but it misses that spark that would make it dope.

Also, for no reason in particular, I wanna give a quick shoutout to whoever did the casting for THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS. You deserve a Gallo 12 and a Gallo 24.

Original - Gone in 60 Seconds (1974)

THE BEST OF ENEMIES (1961)

Set in 1941 during the World War II East African campaign, THE BEST OF ENEMIES tells the (not even remotely funny) comedic story of a British officer (David Niven) and an Italian officer (Alberto Sordi) who, in between people dying and other war horrors, end up taking turns being each other’s prisoner. Hahahahaha! Oh man, that’s funny! I just broke my fuckin’ knee from slapping it so hard. I’m sure the families of the soldiers killed during the various small battles will see the humor in the situation. You see, the one guy would capture the other guy, then…he’d escape and in turn capture the other guy!!! Hardy-har-fucking-har. As the newspaper ad tagline says: “This is war? No! This is fun!!” In fact, if you turn up the volume at 26:08, right as that one guy gets shot in the back, you’ll hear him scream “This is fun!” as he dies.

I’ve always been a fan of David Niven and while I don’t know much about Alberto Sordi, his performance was perfectly fine. The problem with THE BEST OF ENEMIES isn’t the acting or the production values, it’s the shit script. The shit isn’t funny. Like at all. And it’s not just because it’s set during WWII. I have nothing wrong with that. MISTER ROBERTS is one of my favorite movies and it’s very funny. THE BEST OF ENEMIES just isn’t funny. The entire film is two groups of soldiers walking around in the desert accomplishing nothing. Besides capturing each other.

Okay pace, shit story that goes nowhere, dumb ending that resolves nothing, a few boring battle scenes, lots of boring desert scenery, not one single person saying that if they had announced Krys Marshall as the next James Bond immediately after Daniel Craig left the role then we'd probably have another James Bond movie by now if not two, an 100% all-male cast, okay acting, zero gore, zero zombies, a fly landing on David Niven's face.

Negative comments aside, I would be interested in seeing an article or something about the making of the film and some details about the cast. I know almost nothing about early 1960's Italian (or British) Cinema, so I expect the cast was more impressive than I realized. That said, it's still barely worth watching.

[Shout out to the one newspaper ad below that misspelled the word "enemies".]