GONE IN 60 SECONDS (2000)

Steal 50 cars in 72 hours. That’s the gist of the entire story.

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 2 kool 4 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 even 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, almost zero regard by any of the characters concerning the immediate danger they’re in, 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, I could never get over the fact that our heroes are literally car thieves! So, like no matter what their reasonings are…they’re still causing innocent people massive hardships due to their property being stolen. And we're suppose to be rooting for these people? Fuck them. And don’t even get me started on the innocent people injured from all of the car wrecks.

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)

28 DAYS LATER... (2002)

28% action. 90% talking. 2% me yawning loudly.

Some caveman-looking dickneck wakes up in the hospital ("Day of the Triffids"-style), 28 days after an virus of "Rage" breaks out. Rage makes people act like it's 6 AM on Black Friday all the time! Dickneck crawls out of bed and wanders around for a long time. Finally some of the infected attack him, but he's saved by two other survivors. Stuff happens.  Most of it's talking.

I was not a fan of this movie. Fanboys seem to love it and rub their crotches furiously at the mere mention of it's holy name, but I found the entire thing to look low-budget and way too overstylized with the grainy film and the sped up frame rate when the infected were onscreen. I didn't hate the movie, just found it boring and average. It's not until the very end of the movie that there's an action scene that last for longer than just a few seconds. Everything up until that point was just some asshole twitching and screaming then getting killed. Hell, the remake of THE CRAZIES had more action!

There's really no reason explaining why I thought this movie was weak, but during this movie I never felt any of the claustrophobia or complete sense of isolation and doom like I did with the original DAWN OF THE DEAD or Brian Keene's "The Rising" books or playing various zombie video games.

Worth watching, but it's nothing to write home about that's for sure. Moderate low-budget violence, some blood, GY!BE on the soundtrack, zero doom, zero tits, zero logic (if the infection is caused by bodily fluid transference then I'd damn sure be wearing safety glasses and a mouth cover at all times), happy music, people laughing, one shot that is directly lifted from a newspaper ad for THE EXORCIST,  a scene of chimpanzees being upset (that really bummed me out), purposely grainy picture, towards the end there was glimpses of the violence I had wanted to see but even then it cut away too soon.

Part 2 - 28 Weeks Later (2007)
Part 3 - 28 Years Later (2025)
Part 4 - 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026)

 Person middle of screen walking away on sidewalk.

 Human on left side throwing trash bag into dumpster.

 Cameraman extremely visible over to right.

Yeah, you're catch a lot of rain water in that laundry basket.