Awfully Good: Gone in 60 Seconds

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

As we gear up for The F8 OF THE FURIOUS next week, let’s look at another car-centric movie that’s all about family…

Gone in 60 Seconds (2000)

Director: Dominic Sena
Stars: Nicolas Cage, Angelina Jolie, Robert Duvall

Nicolas Cage must save Giovanni Ribisi’s life, which is apparently worth exactly 50 high-end vehicles.

In the pantheon of Nicolas Cage films, GONE IN 60 SECONDS falls somewhere in the middle. It’s not amazing, not boring, just stupid. But a fun kind of stupid! The kind of movie where the humans are named Sphinx, Sway, Freb, Tumbler and Mirror Man, and the cars are named Eleanor, Patricia and Nadine. Where someone falls multiple stories to their death, directly in to the coffin they built and referenced earlier. And where a sex scene gives new meaning to the term “auto-erotica.”

Cage always seriously ponders which DTV movie to do next.

Under the subtle direction of SWORDFISH auteur Dominic Sena, the car chases and automotive action in GONE IN 60 SECONDS are solid and thankfully practical. (Except for the final stunt, which is laughably CGI and impossible.) The talking parts of the movie don’t fare so well, however. Written by Scott Rosenberg, the man who also penned the more memorable Cage-Bruckheimer flick CON AIR, GONE has a similarly colorful script, but it doesn’t approach the crass genius of that masterpiece. While there are a few great lines, mostly thanks to Cage’s offbeat delivery, there are many more eye-rolling stinkers too. Here’s a “good” example:

“This Calitri guy. He’s after my brother?”
“Like stains on a mattress.”

Oof. And there’s much more where that came from.

How about SHOWER IN 60 SECONDS?

Boasting Cage, Angelina Jolie and even Robert Duvall, GONE is full of Oscar-winners who clearly needed to finance new vacation homes. There are plenty of recognizable faces in the cast, including Giovanni Ribisi, Chi McBride and Vinnie Jones, but here are a few performances worth noting:

– Nicolas Cage: Cage gives a toned-down but still quirky performance as Memphis Raines. It’s obvious the actor is just there for the stunt driving, but he’s not 100% asleep most of the other times.

– Angelina Jolie: Not only is Jolie really bad in this movie, but with embarrassing white-girl dreads and an increasingly dirty appearance, she looks downright unhealthy too. Instead of being turned on by their awkward sex scene, I spent the entire time thinking, “I hope Nicolas Cage is up to date on his shots.”

– Christopher Eccleston: The Doctor Who actor plays a bad guy known as The Carpenter, because he… is a carpenter. Eccleston clearly struggles with the admittedly lame dialogue, but his delivery only makes bad lines worse. (Case in point: “One Raines is as good as another. It never Raines, but it pours!”) Also, I’m pretty sure The Carpenter’s headquarters is the same fire-spewing construction site that killed John Malkovich at the end of CON AIR.

And that was the first recorded case of finger herpes.

– Delroy Lindo: Lindo has a thankless role as the detective hellbent on capturing Cage, for reasons we will touch on later.

– Timothy Olyphant: Olyphant plays Detective Drycoff (real name) and was quite possibly high in every scene they filmed.

– Scott Caan: When we first meet his character, he’s discussing in depth the unique way in which he jerks off. You can actually see Robert Duvall contemplating the fact that he worked with this guy’s dad on THE GODFATHER.

The gritty reboot of OLD YELLER had a much more horrifying ending.

You’d think there’d be enough story and action to work with in a film about stealing 50 cars in 12 hours. However, GONE IN 60 SECONDS clearly still has time it needs to waste with the number of stupid subplots included. There are the random parts with Master P and his rival car stealing gang, which only exist to prove that the rapper should never be in front of the camera again. (“I’m gonna smoke you, fool!”) But my personal favorite is the 100% unnecessary plot thread where Robert Duvall’s dog eats three irreplaceable car keys and the movie actually comes to a screeching halt for multiple scenes where the gang has to wait around for the dog to shit it out. The only bright spot is this section of the film features a cameo by a young Michael Pena, who gets the classic line, “What kind of a sicko gets their jollies from playing with dog shit, man?”

Michael always knew someday he and Nicolas Cage would team up again for a movie capitalizing on a national tragedy.

Another terrible part of GONE IN 60 SECONDS is the chemistry-free romance between Cage and Jolie, which comes to a head when the pair awkwardly peeps through a window to watch another couple have sex as they steal their car. You actually have to watch the two Oscar-winners fumble through a poorly-written heart-to-heart scene while two strangers get it on in the background. And if that’s not bad enough, Cage and Jolie eventually get hot and heavy themselves, with Jolie grabbing the shifter knob like a penis and Cage yelling out random car parts as he seduces her. It’s worse than you think.

“Loved you in THE CORE!”

However, nothing comes close to the stupidity witnessed at the end of the film. Delroy Lindo spends the entire movie chasing and stalking Cage, vowing to bring him to justice for decades of criminal activity. He also spends millions of dollars in city resources and property damage from car chases trying to catch him. And then at the end, once he learns that Cage was doing it all for his brother, he immediately lets him off the hook. (Did I mention Cage also literally just committed a murder?) Lindo justifies this with a line so bad it’s unforgettable: “A brother’s love is… a brother’s love”

Even Vin Diesel doesn’t believe in family that much.