Gone in Sixty Seconds

Well, this is the 33rd movie in the WATC(H), and it marks a new millennium for Master Cage. Looking in the rearview, I am almost a third of the way through the experiment, and have seen some exceptional films, some horrible films, some pretty good films, and some truly weird films. 

All of them have been better because of Nicolas Cage, so I am excited to see what happens in the next two decades of craft I will feast upon, especially as the thespian hits his stride and enters the 2000s. 

The first film in released this new decade was a rewatch for me, but had the feel of a new movie because of the great Cageyness one would expect. It was Gone in 60 Seconds (2000), a movie of brotherly love, grand-theft-auto-meets-Ocean’s Eleven style car heists, and an epic, police siren blaring, rubber-tire-squealing, crash-up derby style, SoCal chase turned showdown. 

If this movie hadn’t been a loose remake of H.B. Halicki’s Gone in 60 Seconds (1974) you could argue that it was a trend-setting film for its high speed action and catastrophic crashes, paving the way for Fast and Furious (x infinity) franchise. Instead it was a movie with a lot of box office acceleration out of the gate (making $25 million nationally in the U.S. and beating out Mission Impossible 2 for the top slot) only to peter out down the stretch in comparison to its high ticket production and marketing costs (even grossing $272 million, Disney chalked it up as a loss of $212 million).

Vroom, vroom!

It may not have been especially groundbreaking then, but  GiSS 2K was highly entertaining for me (especially after all the weightiness and soul-searching of 8mm and Bringing Out the Dead.) 

The World According to “Memphis” Raines

I’m going to try to put this one up on the big board in less than 60 minutes. Timer is roaring. 

Gone in 60 Seconds came out in June 2000 and it’s the perfect type of summer blockbuster. You really shouldn’t watch it without a good tub of popcorn (heavy on the butter), an alcoholic beverage of choice (or a soft drink ya teetotaler) and a mind-off approach to plot analysis. 

To give a quick run down of the plot, Randall “Memphis” Raines (Nicolas Cage) is a renowned car thief who grows up without a father (sniff-sniff) because his car dealer dad dies when he and his younger brother Kip Raines (Giovanni Ribisi) are still growing up and making their way in the world. Their poor mother, Helen Raines (Grace Zabriskie) has to pay the bills and do the adulting while working long hours as a waitress. 

While Memphis is “boosting” cars with a crew (and he’s good at it) little bro Kip is doing well in sports but still being influenced by the reputation and charismatic aura of his older brother, Memphis (who wouldn’t be?) 

(In case you’re wondering a lot of this back story is alluded to in framed family photos shown during the opening credits while Moby songs thrum along in the background.)

Memphis, at his mother’s persuasion, gives up the car stealing life and leaves town to (hopefully) stop the subliminal peer pressuring of Kip. Paradoxically, Kip sees this big bro flight as an abandonment and decides to steal cars just to get back at him for leaving. 

Joining up with a gang of some of his younger (less accomplished) car thieves, Kip gets mixed up with one of Memphis old friends, Atley Jackson (Will Patton) who is now working for a villainous British crime boss, Raymond Calitri, aka The Carpenter, (Christoper Eccleston), whose hobbies are wood-working on old furniture, hating everything American, and overseeing the theft of a shit-ton of luxury and hard-to-get vehicles around Long Beach, California.

While trying to help fill the massive order of 50 sports cars in a very short time frame (4 days), Kip biffs it. While stealing a Porsche direct from a dealership, he inadvertently leads the police right back to the gang’s warehouse of stolen cars. The crew escapes, but the cars are impounded and the police lead by Detective Castlebeck (Delroy Lindo) and Detective Drycoff (Timothy Olyphant) are now aware and on high alert.

Vengeful for his losses and concerned for his reputation, The Carpenter sets out to find and kill Kip for his incompetence. Atley, fearing the worst, chases Memphis down to his new home and his transformed life as a go-kart instructor for the children.

After the obligatory foot dragging about promising never to return to “that life”, Memphis returns to Long Beach to rescue his brother and stave off the vengeance plans of The Carpenter.

The Carpenter, however, goes against the grain of Memphis Raines, as he has already captured Kip and threatens to smash him into bits inside a Mustang (or some old car) at Calitri’s remote junkyard lair / headquarters.

To save his brother’s life, Memphis agrees to steal the 50 cars for The Carpenter in time to meet the original deadline (now only 72 hours) when the cars must ship out. Kip is freed, but seems to lack the sense of urgency and know-how of his older brother and decides to just take a nap rather than figure out how to boost 50 rare and expensive cars in the next two to three days. 

Millennials am I right?

The rest of the movie is kind of like Ocean’s Eleven (or The Magnificent Seven I guess, or wait, Seven Samurai ah, nevermind) where Memphis must assemble a all-star crew of specialists, former car thief associates like Otto Halliwell (Robert Duvall), Donny Astricki (Chi McBride), Sara “Sway” Wayland (Angelina Jolie), and the mute and enigmatic enforcer The Sphinx (Vinnie Jones) who all must chip in to help Memphis steal the fifty cars, all in one night, while evading detection, the pursuing police, rival gangs, and the looming timeline of the deadline (and the deadline keeper himself, the violent and unpredictable Calitri). 

A lot of work goes into the preparation–finding and forming and convincing the team–and then casing the cars which are all code-named after women, and written on a big chalk board, for easy visual access and (duh) ironically police observation. 

(“Hmmm, this a pretty tough code to crack… Betsy = 1995 Mercedes…What could it mean?”).  

Kip finally gets on board with the realization that this is all for his benefit, and joins his young crew with Memphis older and wiser, but more curmudgeonly, crew.

This is one of those, “a lot has to go right but only one thing has to go wrong” kind of films where you know a lot will go right and that one thing will go wrong. In this case, the right things that went right were brotherly reconciliation (Kip and Memphis talked it out) and love rekindling (Sway and Memphis almost have sex in an Italian sports car) and the finding and stealing  of 49 of the 50 cars needed by the deadline without the police closing in on them.

The wrong thing was, shocker, the one car that lives in infamy as being unobtainable and perhaps cursed, the car thief’s version of Ahab’s white whale, i.e Eleanor. Eleanor was the name given to a 1967 Shelby GT 500 / Mustang V8, Raines’ Moby Dick, a car he had attempted to steal multiple times, always with bad consequences–”one time he drove it off the pier”. 

I’ll leave the rest of the plot summary and the ending to your viewing pleasure, but let’s just say Memphis drives Eleanor on a fast fast trip down long stretches of urban Long Beach, and even sails the vehicle high to escape a a bunch of cars stopped on a bridge. (I believe Cage performed some of the stunts and this one involved jumping Eleanor on a ramp into a huge pile of cushioning giant boxes. Badass.)

Plus, there’s at least 40 minutes of car chasing to watch, and in the end, well, it’s a summer movie. I’m pretty sure you’ve already figured it out.

Vroom! Vroom! Vroooooooooooooom!

Not a car guy but still liked it

I am not too ashamed to admit this, but I’m not really a car guy. I grew up playing with Hot Wheels and I know the basic differences (visually) between say, a Corvette, a Porsche, and a Lamborghini, but I couldn’t tell you the make and model on a wide array of vehicles I see on the streets every day, much less at a exotic car show. I’m impressed by the outer elegance of the cars, the sleek designs, the colors of the paint, especially the ones I saw in GiSS–all the “ladies” in their wide variety of makes and models, but when it comes to what’s under the hood, or how fast, loud, or easily-handled the car is, well, I couldn’t give a rip about any of that. I don’t have a need for a speed, and more often than not I get annoyed with those who do. Just sayin’. 

And to be honest, I’d rather poke my eyes out than sit and watch all the Fast and Furious movies that have been made ad nauseam. (Admittedly this is probably due in large part to a.) no Nicolas Cage cameos in FaF, and b.) Vin Diesel never shows up as Groot behind the wheel.)  I even got bored on the FaF ride at Universal Studios a couple weeks ago, and it was probably a 30 second experience. Thirty seconds too long in my opinion.

But I did enjoy GiSS because it’s more Ocean’s than FaF and there’s the Cage factor. In spite of my car-ambivalence, I did feel it was a necessary duty to also watch the original Gone in Sixty Seconds (1974) just to see how the two compare and contrast. Again, a lot of car chasing, but here were the notable similarities and differences.

• The newer version with Memphis car theft crew (i.e. Robin Hood’s Merry Men) seemed to mostly enjoy each other after a while, whereas the 1974 GiSS had a crew that seemed to really hate one another. One guy even ratted out the other to the police.
• The crew tasked with stealing 48 cars in the 1974 GiSS had a cute little qualifier rule–they would only steal cars they could verify were insured. There were even instances in the previous version where the thieves returned a car out of fair play.
• Some details from scenes were very similar (trying to hide drugs from an investigating police detective by revving up a Cadillac to blow the “blow” away, the Eleanor making her big jump scene near the end of the film to evade the police, and the attempted theft of two cars with dangerous animals hiding inside (1974 had a tiger, 2000 had a python)
• Some details from scenes were less so (the 1974 film had a lot of media personnel interspersed throughout where reporters with handheld microphone recorders were asking bystanders what they had experienced or seen in the chase (no Twitter, I mean X?); the 1974 film also had a car full of “Black Panther” stereotypes smoking pot in a low rider car that the camera inexplicably zoomed back to every few minutes; the 2000 film included a lot more brother-to-brother dynamics, a mini war with a rival car gang headed by Johnny B (i.e. the rapper Master P); and the 1974 film had the thieves wearing a lot more wigs and sideburns, whereas the 2000 version only had Sway sporting some long white dreadlocks twists.
• I’m pretty sure the 1974 version must have inspired this Beastie Boys video Sabotage. 

Other Random Trivia In 60 Seconds

• I was trying to write down the list of cars with all the female alias, but of course someone has already done this work for me. You can see the list here or on wikipedia where I found it. None of the women in my household were named in this theft: Christa, Colette (or Sarah), Anna.

• The Mr. Horsepower logo (i.e. Clay Smith Cam’s woodpecker logo) shows up in the window of Otto’s shop harking back to H.I. McDunnough’s tattoo in Raising Arizona.
• Rip’s tool for stealing the Porsche from the dealership was a brick stored in the trunk of his car. That one cracked me up. 
• The car thief nicknames and the fan-boy adoration by the youngers for the “legendary” elders in their midst was a bit too much not to laugh at. I mean c’mon, Tumbler, Mirror Man, Freb. Who takes the time for these kinds of things?
• Nicolas Cage’s bleach blonde highlights (or whatever that was) was very popular at the start of the 2000s. I can’t remember if that was a Ricky Martin-started fad or someone else, but everyone from Eminem to Seattle Mariner’s second baseman Brett Boone would be jumping on that bandwagon in the coming years. Dyed blonde hair with some roots showing would have its long day at the races.
• Timothy Olyphant was a great hype man in GiSS–I love him in everything, but he was a tenacious, irritating little croney (very out of his typecast) with some quick-fire sarcasm or jibes for any encounter whether with Raines, his partner Castlebeck, or the informants they worked with.

Best Nicolas Cage Quotes as Memphis Raines

“Control. Vision. Determination. These are the three fundamental components of the new generation race car driver. Speed is a byproduct. Going fast. But remember the car is you. You are the car.”  [Speech given to elementary aged kids at Go Kart facility.]

“Tommy I don’t know what that was, but it wasn’t driving.”

“I didn’t do it for the money. I did it for the cars.” 

“Gleaming and marina blue. Sunfire yelllow. Marboro red. Begging to be plucked. And I’d do it. I’d boost her and just blaaaast to Palm Springs. Instantly feeling better about being me. And then the next day it seems like, I’m getting shot at. My friends are dying. People are being shot at. I didn’t like what I’d become.” [Big bro speech]

“There’s too many self indulgent weiners in this city with too much bloody money!” 

“Because you wouldn’t want to disrupt the synchro mesh, right? or the throttle linkage…Or the…clutch master cylinder, or the overhead camshaft. Just straight in line six. Triple Weber carburetors bolted to each other’s body structures… Good brakes. Good brakes, too.” [Sexy car talk while kissing Sway.]

“I’m a little tired. I’m a little WIRED. And I think I deserve just a little appreciation.” 

Firsts for Nicolas Cage as Memphis Raines

• Bleach blonde
• Working with children (via go-karts)
• Pretending to be a pretentious twat to get intel on a car he wanted to steal
• Stealing fifty cars in an orchestrated fashion in 48 hours *see Recurrences
• Caressing a car like a woman
• Canvassing and putting together a crack team of car thieves
• Sending an old friend a postcard
• Jumping a roadblock The Dukes of Hazard style in a 1967 Shelby Mustang GT 500 (Elenora) his unicorn.
• Buying a guy a drink
• Offering to buy a trucker a doughnut (to keep him in a cafe longer as a distraction)
• Messing with a real-life rapper (but in a film)

Recurrences

• Movie with Grace Zabriskie (Wild at Heart)  
• Stealing a car in general (but on a technicality, Birdy)
• Getting jumped by a gang in a parking lot (Multiple)
• Looking after his screw up brother(s) (Trapped in Paradise)

The Checkered Flag at the Finish Line

There’s no big finish to this post. Was this movie a masterpiece? Nah. Was it fun? Heck, yes. 

I’d watch it again. I’d probably fast-forward the long chase scene at the end since I’ve been down the road before, but I’d definitely watch the planning and the executing of the plan. Good actors, good crew, good heist, good boost. A lot of Cage to be enjoyed. 

The man we thought was a mute throughout the film broke his silence with some profound words near the end, as the movie coasted into denouement. I leave you with the wisdom of the Sphinx:

“If his unpleasant wounding has in some way enlightened the rest of you as to the grim finish beneath the glossy veneer of criminal life and inspired you to change your ways, then his injuries carry with it an inherent nobility, and a supreme glory. We should all be so fortunate. You say poor Toby? I say poor us.”