Gone in 60 Seconds
Posted by martinteller on July 31, 2012
The pet project of writer/director/producer/star H.B. “Toby” Halicki, the plot — what there is of it — concerns a gang of auto thieves trying to round up 48 specific cars in a few days for a big payoff. There’s a lot of confusing stuff about insurance companies that seems barely important. For the first 55 minutes it’s a lot of ho-hum car thefts, atrocious acting (no one in the cast had ever been in a film before, according to IMDb) and it’s all very tedious.
Then (at the moment this screenshot was taken) it gets to the raison d’être for the film, a 40-minute-long car chase with Halicki in a hideous yellow Mustang trying to evade the police, who have been tipped off by his dickhead partner. And yes, it’s impressive. Pretty much the textbook on how to shoot a car chase, it’s got excellent camerawork, covering the action from every interesting angle there is. The destruction is rampant, with Halicki engineering crash after steel-crumpling crash, leaving a horde of disabled vehicles in his wake.
And it’s still not much more interesting than the first hour. I had absolutely no reason to care whether this guy succeeds or fails. If he had been apprehended and/or killed three minutes into it, I would have been equally (un)satisfied with the results. I am impressed with Halicki’s devotion to the project, and his driving ability, and the technical expertise involved in the photography. I can recognize that for fans of car chases, this is probably the alpha and the omega. But after a few minutes, I was bored senseless.
The one intriguing thing about it was the attention to the consequences of Halicki’s vehicular rampage, showing victims suffering from their wounds and being trundled into ambulances. That’s a thoughtful touch, one you rarely see. I can’t say anything else in the film caught my interest. Maybe if I was more of a car enthusiast or something. Rating: Poor (44)
