Need for Speed is junk. You’re going to read reviews telling you how great the racing scenes are, because there are some genuinely exciting sequences featuring cars going fast. Great, what else do you have for me? Forget logic, this film doesn’t even have its own internal logic, which is paramount for a feature where people sign up for a race where the winner wins his competitors’ multi-million dollar cars, but what good is the prize if they are all in ruin by the checkered flag?
A ragged plot, thin characters, a villain (Dominic Cooper) that may as well be a Hanna Barbera character and Michael Keaton explaining every aspect of the plot… To whom? From where? Who is this guy and how does any of this make sense?
“I’m not looking for logic!” you say. “I’m looking for cars going vroom, vroom and cop cars going whew, whew!” Well, director Scott Waugh delivers just that as first-time screenwriter George Gatins does everything he can to bring the popular Electronic Arts video game to the big screen with all the intelligence of an 8-year-old hopped up on sugar.
Aaron Paul (“Breaking Bad”) stars as Tobey Marshall, a small town mechanic whose auto shop is about to go under. Lucky thing, his arch nemesis, the menacingly named Dino Brewster (Cooper), has come to him with a proposition… “Fix up my fancy car and I’ll give you a share of the sale price.” Tobey accepts, fixes the car, Dino double-crosses him, ends up killing one of his friends, framing Tobey and Tobey ultimately ends up in jail. Game over… right?
Nope, Tobey gets out of jail and the only way he can get back at Dino is to… race him in the supposedly “underground”, De Leon race, run by Keaton’s character, known only as Monarch who seems to live his life as his own color commentator.
Insert Imogen Poots as a love interest, Rami Malek inexplicably stripping naked as he quits his job, destroy a plethora of impressive vehicles, steal a military helicopter and you have yourself a film.
Non-discerning moviegoers won’t have a problem with this film. The response will be, “I wanted to see great race scenes and I got great race scenes.” I can’t argue with that, though I will say the only truly “great” race scene comes in the third act where my mind was trying to make sense of what I was watching, causing an internal logic struggle that almost caused me to pass out (admittedly, an exaggeration).
How is the stupidity of this movie any different than the Fast and Furious franchise? At least the end goal in the Fast films makes logical sense based on the unrealistic world in which it is set. I’m not a street racer, but I am made to understand the situation the characters in that first film are up against. I’m not a criminal, but based on the situation 2 Fast 2 Furious places its characters in, I can understand why they do what they do. With Need for Speed the resolution doesn’t even need a car race to settle its problems. Tobey could have challenged Dino to a Ballroom dance off and it would have made as much sense.
If the excuse to watch Need for Speed and the only way to enjoy it is to find hand-clapping, drooling amusement in the racing sequences alone then a couple of two minute trailers should satisfy your needs. Otherwise, are you telling me the screenwriters couldn’t figure out another way to pay respect to a video game franchise where people race cars and cops try to stop them? And for over two hours no less? Try again.
