Need for Speed, 2014.
Directed by Scott Waugh.
Starring Aaron Paul, Dominic Cooper, Imogen Poots, Dakota Johnson, and Michael Keaton.
SYNOPSIS:
After being framed for his best friend’s death a street racer leaves prison and travels cross country to prove his innocence.
I love a good popcorn movie and hope that I have not yet succumbed to movie snobbery, thus I jumped on the opportunity to review Need for Speed. It sounded and looked like and action packed, car chase filled bit of cinema. There are definitely car chases but action packed this film is not. For a film trying to sell us on a title like Need for Speed it is dreadfully slow and torturous.
The plot has us following Tobey Marshall (Aaron Paul), engineer and street racer who runs his Dad’s old garage and can’t afford to pay his Pa’s old loans. He takes an offer to spruce up a car from old rival Dino Brewster (Dominic Cooper) who left their small time town in upstate New York to become a big time racer and, of course, stole Tobey’s girlfriend in the process. This all goes awry when, in a street race, Dino ends up killing Tobey’s best friend and Tobey ends up doing time for it. This set up of the movie takes over half an hour.
After this the movie does begin to liven up and we see Tobey, getting hold of the car he originally spruced up through the buyer of the car’s (very English) assistant Julia Maddon (Imogen Poots) and heading cross country to get his revenge and prove his innocence by participating in a race- on the other side of the country- hosted by the mysterious Monarch (Michael Keaton).
Need for Speed takes a while to really get going as evidenced by the very slow build up. That whole section could really have been done in around 10-12 minutes and the audience wouldn’t have lost out at all. The screenplay is totally ridiculous with Poots’ character starting off as seemingly icy and possibly strong female lead, to ending up as just another love interest in Hollywood’s disregard for female characters. This is not Poots’ fault and she tries her damndest to make something of her character.
Aaron Paul does a good enough job with the rubbish he’s been given, somehow managing to make us care about his characters misfortune using the range of emotions he so well used in Breaking Bad. He holds together a plot that is choppy, has no flow and does it’s best to insult the audience’s intellect. His ‘crew’ are totally forgettable and besides the guy who’s flying the plane I have no idea why they’re actually there. Cooper plays a douchey, rich guy who doesn’t really have much to do but just be a douchey, rich guy. Michael Keaton is given ridiculous dialogue which he delivers ridiculously.
The films true saving grace is the excellent stunt work and the angles in which they are captured. You’ll get enough awesome cars doing awesome things, all refreshingly with no CGI work.
Seeing a Mustang do some of the things they pull off, with some of the close calls, is good for those who love watching these kinds of things.
Need for Speed was probably intended to start a franchise akin to the Fast and Furious films, but lacks the self-awareness of those films to launch anything like that. Combine all the above with a score and soundtrack that’s more ‘feel good’ than ‘feel AWESOME’ and you get a 2 hour and 10 minutes of silly plot, some good stunts and what can only be called a wasted opportunity.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Matt Spencer-Skeen
Originally published March 13, 2014. Updated April 11, 2018.
