Cinema
Gone in 60 Seconds (15, selected cinemas)
Relentlessly shallow
Mark Steyn
,the annual Jerry Bruckheimer sum- mer blockbuster. And this year Jerry, pro- ducer of The Rock, Con Air and Armageddon, is reunited with his favourite screenwriter, Scott Rosenberg. Scott doesn't disappoint: 'How bad is the Carpenter?'
'He's bad. Real bad. Like stains on a mat- tress.'
Just a minute, you're probably saying. 'Stains on a mattress'? Shouldn't that be 'How bad is the cleaning lady'? Surely the answer to 'How bad is the carpenter? ought to be 'He's bad. Real bad. Like a two-by- four that's not plumb.' But you misunder- stand. He's not referring to regular carpenters, or even the Carpenters, but only the Carpenter, a British villain who has Randall 'Memphis' Raines's kid brother Kip by the short and curlies. Memphis's leathery old mom is concerned: 'How deep in is he?' 'Deep,' says Memphis. 'Can you get him out?' asks mom.
'It means doin' things I told you I'd never do.'
'Do 'em.'
By now, you're probably wondering: How bad is this movie?
It's bad. Real bad. Like stains on a mat- tress.
How deep is it? It's not at all deep. It's relentlessly shal- low. It has cars, babes, choppers, all deployed in the cause of Memphis's return to a life of crime, an involuntary move caused by his brother's predicament and one accurately described by another classic line of Rosenberg's: 'a big cock up the ass of this really impressive career I've had.' As you can tell from the dialogue, this is a Disney film, and, when they greenlighted it, they were obviously expecting a pleasant, brain dead summer blockbuster, an expen- sive hit remake of a low-budget forgotten footnote from 1974 made by and starring H.B. HaHeld. The idea was that Nicolas Cage would steal a bunch of expensive cars in the eponymous 60 seconds, there would be a villain, a babe, some chases, and Bob's Your uncle. But that was before the Oscar- winning stars moved in and started tweaking and tinkering. Angelina Jolie's hair was the first to go: she decided her character had to have dreadlocks, which wasn't quite the star's babe look Bruckheimer wanted. Per- haps that's why, having given in on the hair- cut, he and his director Dominic Sena edit Miss Jolie out of the picture for long stretches at a time.
Anyway, Memphis has to steal 50 rare cars or his kid brother will be sleeping with the fishes, unlike the rest of us who sleep through Jerry Bruckheimer films. So the first thing Memphis does is get in touch With his old pal Robert Duvall, who's doing the opposite of Cage and Miss Jolie. No messing around with haircuts and motiva- tion here. He knows he was hired to be Robert Duvall — not Robert Duvall the great actor, but the Robert Duvall who coasted through The Rock and Con Air. Duvall's job is to assemble a crack team of car thieves, which he does in the film's longest and most tedious sequence. The Fasting agent seems to have misheard and Just hired everyone on the long short-list. If you're wondering why your motor wasn't lucked last week, it may be because the Chap with the concession for your street is Up there on screen with Nicolas Cage. Meanwhile, there's a cop. Unlike the !3ntish police, he knows exactly what Cage is up to and which 50 cars he's going to steal. But PC Plod wants to get the entire gang and so he figures he'll wait until the Oth car — a 1967 Shelby GT 350 Mustang. He'll save that for last,' figures the cop, and so sits back to let the remaining 49 be stolen or we.wouldn't have a movie. Incidentally, the title — Gone in 60 Sec- - refers to your brain. If you're still enjoying this movie after one minute, check your vital signs. Even by the minimal stan- dards of summer blockbusters, even by the even more minimal standards of Jerry Bruckheimer, this film is completely ridicu- lous.
On last week's letters page, James Frich- tel rightly identified the Dorothy Lamour/ Betty Hutton deliberate mistake in my recent column on deliberate mistakes. Well done, sir. However, I think we'll now change the competition: on the off-chance that I get anything factually correct, feel free to let me know. The proverbial stopped clock is right twice a day, though we're never sure quite when.
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