BEFORE: It might seem like an odd leap from serial killers to car thieves, but I'm going where the linking leads me. And I'm staying in the same category, which is crime (I've got the watchlist separated into 8 or 9 categories). I do have another film about a killer coming up, but it's going to take 3 days of clever linking to get there. Tonight Will Patton carries over from "Copycat".
THE PLOT: A retired master car thief must come back to the industry and steal 50 cars with his crew in one night to save his brother's life.
AFTER: I admit, I was all prepared to dislike this film, and I was ready to treat it as another feat of endurance - it's just a silly film about stealing cars, right? But then it kind of won me over in the end. Not because it has "heart" or anything ridiculous like that - it tried for sentiment, but such attempts were laughable. Putting the main character's brother's life in jeopardy was such an blatantly obvious way to turn a despicable set of actions into something noble. What if he had to go out and kill people to save his brother's life, would that be OK? What if he had to blow up a bank? Wrong is wrong, you can't go changing the rules of what's right just to save one person - otherwise there's just no moral code any more.
But this film features two things I love - making lists, and crossing things off lists. You might think those actions are the same thing, but I disagree. Anybody can MAKE a list, and it's easy as pie to never get around to the things on your list, but then there's the going out and DOING, whether that's errands or job hunting or stealing cars.
The big boss behind the theft has a very specific list of 50 high-end cars, some of which are commonplace and some of which are extremely rare. Why these specific 50 cars? Who knows? He may have clients all over the world who have always wanted a 1967 Shelby Mustang GT 500, or a 1962 Aston Martin DB1. Which leads to the question - if those clients are so rich and powerful, why don't they just BUY whatever car they want? But let's assume that all of these cars go for less on the, umm, secondary market.
I want to point out here that I'm NOT a car guy. I don't own a car, I've never owned a car. I have a license, but barely ever need it. Most of the time I take the subway or a taxi or just hoof it, otherwise I'm dependent upon my wife's car and the kindness of my friends to get me where I need to go. But I am an ardent fan of the "Grand Theft Auto" video-games, though I haven't had time yet to get into GTA4 or GTA5. I got stuck somewhere in the San Andreas version, never finished it and lost my motivation - but I go back and play GTA 3 or Vice City sometimes for fun. And within those games are missions where the player is presented with a similar list of cars to be stolen and delivered, and those are always my favorite parts of the game.
When you consider this film was released in 2000, and the breakthrough game "GTA 3" was released in 2001, it's not hard to draw connections between the two - though the video-game drew inspiration from films like "Scarface", "Taxi Driver" and "The Dead Pool", with references to "The Godfather", "Easy Rider" and "Pulp Fiction", among others, at heart it's about stealing cars, and that leads me back here. When Cage's character sees a truck with a tilted flat-bed and he's got a long, clear straight bridge between him and the truck, I immediately recognized the potential of a "Stunt Jump" from the game. Other similar elements involve the high-profile car crushers, and all those scenes shot in warehouses down by the docks.
Cage's character has four days to steal the 50 cars, but instead of splitting up the list over four days, he figures that after the first day, the heat will be on, so the time is best spent with three days of research and one day of actual theft. As I always say, without deadlines, nothing would ever get done. So they round up enough people to do the research - finding the cars, planning the heists, and then the thefts. See, this supports my theory - three days to make the list, one day to do the task.
And there are hurdles - there's a rival gang of car thieves that claims the territory for their own (though they're dispatched by a trick straight out of "The Dukes of Hazzard"), and there's a couple of L.A. cops who are staking out the Mercedes Benzes on the list, who always seem to be one step ahead of things, at least until they're not. Plus there's that constantly looming deadline...
I haven't watched any of the "Fast & Furious" films, and that's intentional. So comparisons will not be made here, because I choose not to.
Also starring Nicolas Cage (last seen in "8MM"), Angelina Jolie (last seen in "Alexander"), Giovanni Ribisi (last seen in "Perfect Stranger"), Robert Duvall (last seen in "The Chase"), Delroy Lindo (last seen in "A Life Less Ordinary"), Timothy Olyphant (ditto), Christopher Eccleston (last seen in "Thor: The Dark World"), Chi McBride (last seen in "The Kid"), Scott Caan (last seen in "Friends With Money"), Vinnie Jones, T.J. Cross, James Duval, William Lee Scott, with cameos from Grace Zabriskie (last seen in "My Own Private Idaho"), Jaime Bergman, Frances Fisher (last seen in "True Crime"), Arye Gross (last seen in "Tequila Sunrise"), Michael Peña (last seen in American Hustle"), John Carroll Lynch (last seen in "Shutter Island"), Ken Jenkins.
RATING: 6 out of 10 slim jims
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