Originally posted on Midwest Film Journal
By the year 2000, Jerry Bruckheimer Films was in the middle of a hot streak, following the box office successes of both Armageddon and Enemy Of The State two years prior. Teaming back up with Nicolas Cage, the star of their 1997 vehicle Con Air, the production company looked to strike lightning again with the heist remake Gone In 60 Seconds. In addition to Cage, the movie boasted a talented ensemble cast featuring fellow Oscar winners Robert Duvall and Angelina Jolie, the latter of whom received second billing on the project. But even with the components for a hot-rodded blockbuster under the hood, the film was a financial failure for Touchstone Pictures and ultimately written down as a $212 million loss for Disney. Critically, it was even more of a crash-and-burn affair and while it doesn’t exactly hold up 25 years later, it encapsulates the turn-of-the-millennium penchant that studios had to outdo each other in the “edginess” department.
Gone In 60 Seconds opens in the middle of a “boost” under cover of darkness at the hands of car thief Kip Raines (Giovanni Ribisi), who makes a noisy getaway with a Porsche 996. Ever the screw-up, Kip brings heat back to his crew’s warehouse, forcing them to ditch the cadre of confiscated cars they’ve spent weeks acquiring. This puts them way behind for the job they’re completing for ruthless gangster Raymond “The Carpenter” Calitri (Christopher Eccleston), who threatens to kill Kip if he can’t make things right. Doubtful that Kip can finish the job, Calitri’s right-hand man Atley (Will Patton) reaches out to Kip’s older brother Randall “Memphis” Raines (Cage), a notorious carjacker who went straight years ago. Up against a ludicrous 72-hour deadline to steal 50 luxury vehicles, Randall recruits — among many others — his mechanic ex-flame Sway (Jolie) and mute mortician Sphinx (Vinnie Jones) to pull off the high-octane heist.
Though Jolie is riding shotgun on the cast list and appears caddy corner with Cage on the one-sheet, she doesn’t appear in Gone In 60 Seconds as much as one may expect. After Randall surprises her by popping by work unannounced, Sway slides out on her creeper to reveal a suspiciously clean uniform and bleached blonde dreadlocks that kids today would deem “a choice”. Randall follows Sway to her second job bartending, her pouty lips and ice-blue eyes reluctantly refusing his recruitment opportunity but, of course, reconsidering the next day. She interrupts a meeting between Randall and Atley, pulling up on her motorcycle and insisting that she’s only taking the job for Kip. From here on, just about every subsequent line Jolie utters is paired with a raised eyebrow, a salacious smirk or both at the same time.
One would assume Jolie shot a good deal more footage for Gone In 60 Seconds that didn’t make the final cut and there are several plausible reasons her scenes hit the cutting room floor. The most obvious is that she doesn’t have much on-screen chemistry with Cage, despite the movie’s best effort to steam up windows with a stakeout-turned-makeout scene. As Sway shimmies over the gear shifter while Randall seduces her by reciting auto parts, they briefly lock lips before she puts the brakes on and insists they get back to work. Cage’s scenes with Jolie are peppered with the actor’s typical eccentric line reads and she tries to return the volleys but for some reason, their freak frequencies don’t quite line up. It doesn’t speak well of the film that Cage has better chemistry with the Shelby Mustang GT500 nicknamed “Eleanor”, overtly identified as “the one that got away”.
At the same time, it’s a wonder director Dominic Sena is even able to accommodate a potential romantic subplot when he has so many other storylines to address. Delroy Lindo and Timothy Olyphant collectively have more screen time than Jolie as detectives chasing down leads and shaking members of the crew down while trying to put the elusive Randall behind bars for good. Portraying the wise old mentor coming back for one last ride, Robert Duvall is relegated to crossing off the female code names for automobiles in canted-angle close-ups during the film’s climax. Elsewhere, rapper Master P plays Johnny B, a gang leader who pops up guns blazing in several scenes to settle a score with Randall left over from his past life. Michael Peña even turns up in an early film role as a thug appalled by the ease with which one of the crew members digs through dog feces to procure a set of laser-cut car keys.
In Gone In 60 Seconds, the cars should be the props and the actors should be the stars but in actuality, the opposite ends up being the case. Much of the movie’s second half is devoted to flashy montages set to big beat remixes on the soundtrack of vaunted vehicles being broken into and illegally revved up. Car nuts might drool at the sight of some of these exotic beasts in action but those watching, like me, who top out at “sensible sedan” will be bored watching what feels like all 50 of those on the checklist being picked off. When I first watched the movie with my friends, I think I was more in awe of the fact that the PlayStation 2 we used to watch it on could play DVDs; clearly, this was no 20th century video game console. Fittingly, Jolie had more success adapting the PlayStation title Tomb Raider just a year later, catapulting her onto the A-list after Gone In 60 Seconds didn’t quite turn the engine over.