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)

LONGLEGS (2024)

I haven’t seen many Small Wonder / THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS crossovers, but of the ones I have seen LONGLEGS is the weakest. Also, I don’t even believe in Satan and even I’m offended at how weak this Satanic turkey is.

Full-time Victoria "Vicki" Ann Smith-Lawson cosplayer and newly recruited FBI agent Lee Harker fails miserably at her first assignment, so she’s put on the cold-case of a serial killer by the name of Longlegs. (No relation to the Long-Legged Mack Daddy.) Within a few hours she has somehow figured out all kinds of clues that has baffled the FBI for decades. Gee, wonder how that could be?! Durr. Anyway, more amazing coincidences happen over and over six hundred and threescore and six more times and before you can say “The Holy Spirit is a dork.” Harper Lee, I mean, Lee Harker is neck deep in trouble.

Whoever made the trailer for this film should be given 66.6% of the box office because it was really fun and it fooled my dumbass into thinking it was going to be a mean-spirited creepfest, but nope. I sat my chiseled buns down in my normal seat at the theater and within 10 minutes I was already rolling my handsome eyeballs at how ridiculous the story was. If somebody can’t figure out the ending of this movie within the first few minutes, then you got a problem. Also, is there some sort of light bulb wattage regulations in this universe? Why is nearly every light bulb in the film barely stronger than a single candle? Ewwwhhh! I heard a suspicious sound late at night outside my secluded forest home. Let me turn on my outside spotlight. Flips switch and the bulb has the illumination power of 37 lightning bugs in a dusty jar.

I have many more thoughts about LONGLEGS (for example: why does Nicholas Cage look like a bloated Marilyn Manson dressed up as the Easter Bunny from CRITTERS 2?), but nobody besides me reads this shit so what is the point. I’ll update this review with screenshots and other stuff when the film comes out on home media and I watch it a few more times. And yes, I’ll even crawl through it frame-by-frame to capture all the creepiest stuff...so IMDb can put my screenshots on their site and put ads on them. Whoops! Did I type that out loud?

[Update 10/06/2024: Added screenshots. Have fun IMDb.]