What's more American than their love of cars?
How about a drive-in? Meet small-town mechanic and local street-racing legend "Tobey Marshall" (Aaron Paul)
who lost his girl to 'the bad guy': his high-school football and
racing rival turned professional driver. So, this movie ain't just
about racing, it's about
Revenge. Each major plot point
kicks up the revenge motive more and more, but with a twist. The movie featured a lot of
elements we loved in movies like Bullit
(1968), American Graffiti
(1973),Death
Race 2000 (1975),
Grand Theft Auto
(1977), The Cannonball Run
(1981), Thelma & Louise (1991), The Fast and The Furious series,
and
Getaway (2013), and it doesn't take long for the movie to get
right into a race.
AMERICAN
MUSCLE
Pitting a 1966
Pontiac GTO against a 1968 Chevy Camaro and a 1968 (or
'69) Ford
Torino GT, it was an All-American
muscle show. Add to that,
the street race starting horn is the horn of a passing train that
they have to beat to a railroad crossing, and then, they speed through
the a very American small town "Mt. Kisco" (NY but
actually Georgia) complete with town square, founder's
statue, and covered bridge. This first race sets up the main characters and the dynamic
of Marshall and his buddies, and injects you with the "need for
speed", as you hear and feel the
deep throaty rumble of American muscle that is unlike any other rush (if you've ever had the
pleasure of driving one of these powerful classics).
So, we start with bitterness over some past "locker-room" drama,
plus losing his
girl to the big City—where she'd rather be with a 'real' driver—and small-town-hero Tobey Marshall is about to lose his father's Mechanic
shop to foreclosure. Winning the $5,000 local street racing purse helps, but
it's not enough. Enter "Dino Brewster" (Dominic Cooper) who now has a
mega car dealership
of some sort and has acquired the legendary unfinished final car famed designer
Carroll
Shelby was working on for Ford at the time of his 2012 death.
[The
car in the movie is a modified 2013 FORD Mustang Shelby GT500. ("Shelby was
working on 50th anniversary edition of the Mustang when he died at
the age of 89, but the car in the movie is a fictionalized."2)]
Brewster brings the proposition of earning $500,000 to Marshall in
return for finishing the car. He pays Marshall a great compliment
saying that in his professional racing experience, none of the
mechanics have been as good as Marshall and his shop buddies.
As much as Marshall dislikes Brewster, in
order to keep the shop, he must accept, and of course, his buddies
support him. There was, surprisingly, no working-on-the-car,
auto-shop-porn, male-bonding, time-lapse car-transforming montage,
instead, they cut to the ultimate Ford commercial. Mustangs run on a 'screen'
which is a car cover. The crumble like liquid nitrogen and the
pieces form the outline of the Mustang beneath the cover, which goes
to the reveal.
BRITISH BABE
Enter 'the girl' (gen Poots). Marshall
and "Little Pete" (Harrison Gilbertson looking so James Dean
plays Marshall's sidekick and the ex-girlfriend's little brother),
and boys meet girl. This girl is more than eye candy, and Marshall
is intrigued. I loved Pete's line "It's 900 horsepower baby."
Enter the car. It was a wow! factor reveal but with the remote for
the hood, I was a goner. If that didn't impress you, chances are you
didn't like this movie, but I did!
Marshall and 'the girl' sell the car (we get
to see it go over 230 miles per hour). Brewster and Marshall exchange
words. It's just Brewster's way of reneging on the deal. They are still
fighting over who's the better driver. If Marshall
loses, Brewster keeps all the money. Cut to the second race.
Brewseter's
uncle has 3 Koenigsegg Agera R's (white, silver, and red).
The minute they chose cars and Pete got the white car, I knew it was
he who would die in the movie. In the trailer I thought it might be
the girlfriend, but this was more devastating because Pete was an
innocent.
This second race takes them on the highway and
we see a To-Live-And-Die-In-L.A.-style
segment against oncoming
traffic. Up to this point, when Marshall is able to get back into
the right direction of moving traffic, we think it's just street
racing. It will be fine. Brewster has other ideas. He's being blocked by
Pete so Marshall can win (Marshall is the better driver), so
Brewster
clips Pete's car. At this point the movie splits into the
right thing to do and the wrong thing to do. Brewster did the
wrong thing—all that matters to him is winning. Pete spins out
of control and even though I saw a still of his car crash, I had no idea
it's place in the movie. It was a devastating to watch, a tribute to
the appeal of Harrison Gilbertson's performance and the skilled stunt work
orchestrated by Superstar Stuntman Lance Gilbert (watch
the video below to see the movie magic). It drives home our choices
in life, unrecoverable circumstances, and irreplaceable costs.
Brewster must
have
the money. Marshall does the right thing and turns around to go help Pete,
thereby losing the race.
Since Pete is killed, Brewster covers up his participation/guilt,
framing Marshall who goes
to jail for manslaughter. Marshall loses everything, his best friend, his
girl (he already had but now she thinks he's responsible for the
death of her little brother), his family business, and his freedom, but
apparently not his drivers' license (just kidding). The minute he's out he breaks parole to race.
When you're breaking parole by crossing state lines, what's a little
thing like a suspended license?
Marshall and the girl (I keep calling her that because I don't think
I heard her character name once in the movie), start a cross-country
trek to try to get into an underground high-stakes, big-purse race known as
the "De Leon" (like the video-game), and they re-assemble their old team. I
particularly enjoyed "Finn" (Rami Malek) quitting his desk job on
the spot, stripping off his clothes and kissing his office crush,
before flipping everyone off "Have a nice day you miserable
bastards." When asked why he's naked he replies "To make sure I never come back." (Something every underpaid office worker dreams about:
never going back.) Marshall's engine revving to get Finn back on the team alerts
the police and there is one hell of a chase scene through downtown
Detroit.
AMERICA THE
BEAUTIFUL
Here's where the cross-country-tour-of-America feeling
really kicked in for me. There's no more American city to me than
Detroit. New York and Miami are more international, L.A., Chicago,
and Philadelphia are about money, but Detroit is the working
man/Average Joe through and through. We see small towns,
cityscapes, and farmlands, Monument Valley, Bonneville Salt Flats,
and eventually San Francisco. There's a breathtaking night-to-day
time lapse shot. LOVE those! The movie showcases the
diversity, scale, and beauty of the American landscape.
The De Leon race is about Marshall beating
Brewster. Brewster, ever the dirty player, puts a price on Marshall's head
and that leads to some interesting crashes. There's a couple other
incredible stunt driving scenes: the one in Detroit features a
"grasshopper" (photo above), and another in a small tour detour features a
"Bus, bus, bus", but I don't want to spoil any more scenes.
One thing that hit me was that Aaron Paul was very "John McClane" in
this (would love to see him star in Die Hardest!). He's
today's everyman to be sure, and we will always see Jesse Pinkman
when we look at him, "bitch", and we root for him for all that
he went through in Breaking Bad in the way that movies blur
actors' roles and reality.
The De Leon goes so quickly we hardly have time
to drool over the
2010 Bugatti Veyron
SS,
Saleen S7, Spania GTA,
2010
Lambourghini Sesto Elemento,
2013 McLaren P1, and the
2011 Koenigsegg Agera
R, which reappears for an encore. The whole
movie has been a set-up fueling the passion for this final race, and there's never a
dull moment. Michael Keaton's character calls it a "dangerous race". That's an understatement. It
leaves me wondering how does everyone involved not go to jail
after causing so much damage? There are more spectacular
crashes, close calls, and outright disasters! Racers get picked off,
cop cars are demolished, innocent drivers smash into one another.
It's great! (you know what I mean)
In the final moments Brewster pulls the same move that killed Pete on
another racer
"Texas Mike," and then he tries to pull the same move on Marshall.
Clearly, he Pete's death taught him nothing. Marshall is too smart for that though,
and he brakes and lets Brewster pass. Brewster clearly wants to kill
him. When Marshall brakes, Brewster loses control and crashes.
Since the race was down to just the two of them, Marshall has plenty
of time to go back, and does. He pulls Brewster from the burning wreck
just before it would have incinerated him. Since Marshall finally
has the evidence (the red car) to prove he was innocent, you know Brewster's going to jail and
Marshall's name will be cleared. There's just the little matter of
the illegal race. Marshall decides to finish the race after
all, and wins, but they don't go into whether
or not he gets the cars or money. He's already won by being the better person
and doing the right thing again. Once he finds out Brewster's fine, though,
he punches him. Brewster gets off easy.
Marshall serves 178 days for illegal street racing, and what does
he do when he gets out? Drive. By now you would think
his drivers license is revoked. They set it up for a part two.
I'd watch that. This movie was short on physical muscle and cheesy one-liners,
but it satisfied most of my
Action Movie Essentials: The
Hero has to be on the Right Side (check), with Skills
(check),
Explosions and Vehicle Chases, Boy
Toys (check, check, check+),
Camaraderie and Dominance (check), and The
RUSH (check)! It's a good movie. The stunts are worth it
alone, but Aaron Paul is great in it. Would love to see him in more
Action Movies, talking trash! with
Johnny Strong . . . Oh Yeah!!
1Need for Speed's
Director is Scott Waugh, and it's a
BANDITO BROTHERS
Production . . . you know, the company owned by Mike
McCoy
and Scott Waugh who did Act of
Valor. That alone is a reason to see it!
action movie freak
