Need for Speed

Review by Pete Roche

Aaron Paul (best known as Jessie on the recently concluded Breaking Bad) has piercing blue eyes, a wide forehead topped with a shock of slick brown hair, and a gruff monotone.  He looks like he could be the son James Caan didn’t know he had (notwithstanding Buddy the Elf), which makes him as fit as any young stud to play a troubled car mechanic-turned-federal fugitive in NEED FOR SPEED.

Toby Marshall (Paul) is a reputable small-town grease monkey running his recently-deceased father’s chop shop.  He and his crew are good under the hood, but even better at performing customized car upgrades and racing rivals on weekends.  One such contest is prefaced by a nighttime rendezvous outside a drive-in theater, where naturally everyone’s watching the extended—and iconic—car chase from the 1968 Steve McQueen thriller, BULLITT.  The ’50s-ish sequence smacks of GREASE and THE OUTSIDERS; you expect Fonzie to pull up on his motorcycle.  Screenwriter George Gatins casts Toby’s close-knit group as a bunch of likeable, down-home, jeans and T-shirt wearing red-blooded American boys with a love for fast women and even faster automobiles.   

Getaway

Review by Bob Ignizio

Retired racecar driver Brent Magna (Ethan Hawke) speeds around an Eastern European city in an armored Shelby Mustang Super Snake wreaking havoc while getting chased by police cars. Unwillingly along for the ride is an unnamed young girl (Selina Gomez) who just happens to be a computer whiz. Both driver and passenger are at the mercy of an unseen bad guy who has kidnapped Magna's wife, all part of a completely ludicrous heist plot.


There really isn't much in the way of story or acting or any other boring stuff like that in GETAWAY. Just lots of car chases and car crashes occasionally broken up by brief bits of expository dialogue and witty repartee on the level of, “I hate you.” It's not much of a movie, but I do at least have to commend the filmmakers for steering clear of the CGI and doing all the stunts for real. Unfortunately the editing is so fast you seldom get to really savor the smash-ups, so even on that basic primal level the film fails.