Movie Review: Need For Speed

Need For Speed is the sophomore effort by former stuntman turned director Scott Waugh.  His first film being Act of Valor which is shamelessly plugged in this film.  His eye for stunts is the one shining point to this otherwise generic racing film.

Tobey Marshall (Aaron Paul, Breaking Bad) and his gang of mechanic friends are just trying to get by running his dead father's auto shop.  Money is tight, he's falling behind on loans.....enter Dino Brewster (Dominic Cooper, The Devil's Double) as an old street racing rival turned pro.  There's bad blood from a stolen girlfriend or something?  Dino offers him a job which will help pay off the loan.  Then he offers to race Tobey to go all or nothing.  This race results in Tobey's best friend being run off the road and killed by Dino.  Dino runs away, gets an alibi and Tobey takes the fall for a two year stint in jail.  This seem long-winded?  That's just the set-up for the rest of the film, and it took up 30-40 minutes.  And still it didn't seem like it really gave any depth to the back stories of the characters.

From there Tobey gets angry and tries to get into a secret underground race in California to get back at Dino.  The majority of the film is essentially a race to get to the race in time.  Meanwhile, Dino hires other drivers to "take out" his competition along the way.  I guess what's next is a spoiler, but you've probably already figured out that he gets to the race in time and wins.  The end.

I want to be fair to the movie and at least play up it's strengths.  Like I said, Scott Waugh was a stuntman before, and that is a good thing for this film.  He did all practical effects.  What you see with the driving was really done.  Little to no CGI or special effects.  Some of the stunts are pretty cool, one involving a jump and another involving a helicopter.

The other good thing is some of the acting.  This narrows down mostly to the two leads, Aaron Paul and Imogen Poots.  I thought they had pretty good chemistry together, and were fun to watch when it was just those two.  Sadly, they had very little to work with because they apparently forgot to hire a script writer.  Another character who most didn't like because he was too over the top was the one I liked because he was too over the top.  That was the "mysterious" DJ Monarch (Michael Keaton, Robocob (2014)).  I also enjoyed Scott Mescudi, who played one of his comic relief mechanic friends.

Then there were the other actors.  Again, not entirely their fault.  Some of it was just the bad writing.  A good example is Dominic Cooper playing the bad guy.  He's very bland in this movie, but I know he can act.  He's fun as Howard Stark in the Marvel movies, and if you want to see some of the best acting of the past few years, watch him in The Devil's Double.  He is absolutely phenomenal.

The biggest downfall of the film is the story, and before you start, I was well aware that the story was going to be weak going in.  However it's the character development that makes it not work.  The whole opening of the film didn't work because even spending as much time as they did you still didn't really care about the rivalry.  I wanted Tobey to just take the initial money and go back to his shop.  He took the race instead.  This also was frustrating because Pete's death is what ultimately drives him to the end of the film.  We're supposed to feel sympathy about Pete's death, but it was the result of a reckless race through town where they caused several car accidents and almost killed a homeless man.  Tobey is supposed to be a sympathetic protagonist through the movie, which would have worked for me if I didn't watch him leave a path of death and destruction across the whole country through the entire movie.

Despite all this, I still did have a little fun watching the middle "Smokey and the Bandit" section of the movie.  Yes, he causes accidents, but it's a little fun watching him evade the cops across the country with the help of two friends in a truck (resulting in a high speed gas refill), and one eye in the sky (Mescudi inexplicably showing up in multiple stolen aircrafts including a Cessna plane, a news helicopter and somehow an Army helicopter with a stupefied co-pilot).  And like I said, Keaton brought a little life to the end of his movie with his "mysterious, identity unknown" DJ Monarch.  (Not sure how this works, when he plasters his face on his web feeds). 

Overall, it's really not a great movie.  If you can turn off your brain for the plot holes and make it through the 30-40 minute set-up, you might have fun watching the racing and high speed chases, if that's what you're after.  I'd at least suggest a red box rental when it comes out.

Rating: ****------ (4 out of 10)

Memorable Quote:
Julia Bonet: Never judge a girl by her Gucci boots.