Gone In 60 Seconds
Buena Vista Home Entertainment
Cast: Nicolas Cage
Extras: Extended Cut, Featurettes, Trailers
Rating:
Hummers, Ferraris, Porsches, Mercedes, and a 1967 GT Ford Mustang. But does this thing have a plot? Randall 'Memphis' Raines is a luxury car thief. And he's successful. But this business is risky. Someday, something is going to go wrong. So Randall retires. But his younger brother Kip is attacked by a rather nasty British gangster. The only way Randall can save his brother is to pull off one last last super-heist and steal a boat-load of luxury cars. All in one night! Randall rounds up his old car-heist buddies for the final score. But a rival gang has plans for the same score on the same night. And the local detectives have plans to drop a net on the whole bunch of them. This one was born for Jerry Bruckheimer.
The first 70 minutes of "Gone in 60 Seconds" putters around with character actors chewing up the scenery, as the story builds towards the big money chase scene. The ultra-rare McLaren F1 was scheduled to be in the movie, but when this failed, producers hired another supercar, the Jaguar XJ220. "Gone in 60 Seconds" features two super-charged actors in the leading roles: Nicolas Cage, who won the Academy Award for "Leaving Las Vegas(1995)", and Angelina Jolie, Oscar-winner in 1999 for "Girl Interrupted".
The UMD transfer is widescreen in it's original aspect ratio of 2.35:1. The black levels are deep, and the overall quality is very good. In the opening credits (under a terrific rock soundtrack), the camera linger on a close-up of a racing stop-watch. Brilliant green hues seem to drip off the LCD screen. It is eye candy. Some of the reds tend to drift a bit, not unlike the crimsons that float somewhat in "SpiderMan 2".
The excllent audio is Dolby Digital 5.1 Stereo. The back of the case says: "Dolby Digital Surround". They're not kidding. This is one loud UMD. You tend to get blasted by the engines, the tires, and the hype-music, and you love it! Not all of the Buena Vista UMD's come in "Digital Surround", so this is a treat. "Gone in 60 Seconds" audio is so loud that you can listen with your PSP speakers, but for the best result, I recommend external speakers or the bud earphones. You get 23 chapter selections, and the menu is a hoot. The menu has a speedometer in the middle, and when you select a feature, you hear an ever-increasing engine roar. By pressing the D-pad lever, you can accelerate to a simulated speed of 90 mph, and that is loud.
You get two or three forced trailers in the beginning, including a jazzy one for "Sin City". There are three extras. The first is "Action Overload", pretty obvious. The next two featurettes are "Zero to 60 (4:08)" and "Wild Rides (5:21)", in which the director and others look at movie pre-production and stunt driving. This UMD is the Director's Cut Extended Version, which is a fancy way of saying they took nine minutes of footage left on the cutting-room floor and spliced it back into the feature. This includes a few chatty sequences between Cage and Giovanni Ribisi, and another one between Cage and Robert Duvall. This extra nine minutes adds nothing to character development or dramatic pace.
If you own the original DVD, here's a chance to pick up some material you haven't seen before. And the UMD is better than I expected in terms of sound, quality,and organization. I'm a fan of Jerry Bruckheimer, but remember that this is no "Con Air", or "The Rock". "Gone in 60 Seconds" is a remake of the low-budget 1974 cult film in which 40 autos were destroyed in the closing chase sequences.
