Clueless Movie Reviews: “Need For Speed”

Plodding, predictable, and in dire need of editing, Need for Speed makes the Fast and the Furious films look like “Masterpiece Theater.” Not even the most fanatic of gearheads and devout fans of the video game series the film is based on will find much to enjoy in this multiple car pile-up of a film, as whatever well-executed stunt work and reminders of the game series to be found here take a back seat to cliched plots and dull-as-dirt characters.

Aaron Paul (“Breaking Bad”) plays Tobey Marshall, a talented driver who uses his skills street racing in order to keep his family’s auto shop financially afloat. With the shop on the verge of closing, he makes a deal with shady exotic car dealer and ex-NASCAR driver Dino Brewster (Dominic Cooper): Tobey and his crew of dedicated grease monkeys finish work on a custom Shelby Mustang that Dino will sell for no less than $2 million, and in return they get a portion of the sale. Neither Tobey nor his colorful crew trust Dino, who also happens to be dating Tobey’s ex, Anita (Dakota Johnson), but Tobey knows they need the money and he knows they can do the job.

Of course, things don’t go as planned, and dealing with Dino leads to tragic consequences. Tobey winds up serving a three-year prison sentence in the aftermath, and once he’s out, all he wants is revenge. His plan: draw the attention of the reclusive and mysterious Monarch (Michael Keaton), the organizer of an invitation-only winner-takes-all supercar race called the De Leon, score an invite to the race, and defeat Dino, who will be in the race and who will have his fortune and his reputation on the line when he does.

Yes, you read that correctly. After losing three years of his life, all this guy wants to do is find the man responsible and beat him in a car race. Makes perfect sense, right?

To make his plan work, he’ll need to reunite his crew — smart aleck chopper pilot Benny (Scott Mescudi) and mechanics Peck and Finn (Ramon Rodriguez and Rami Malek, respectively) — and enlist the help of Julia (Imogen Poots), the car buyer who orchestrated the sale of the Shelby Tobey and co. built at the start of the film. He’ll also need to get from New York to California for the start of the race in a matter of days, and avoid Dino’s efforts to keep him out of the race along the way, because it’s not like Dino’s just going to sit back and say, “What, Tobey’s racing? Awesome! The more, the merrier!”

Feeling the “need for speed” yet?

The problem with adapting video games into film has always been coming up with a compelling narrative that will more or less dovetail with the objectives and the nature of the game. With games such as Mortal Kombat or Tomb Raider, this task is made much easier by the fact that the games already have compelling narratives and interesting characters — the challenge then is simply a matter of making the material feel authentic to the game experience while still making a film that the casual viewer will enjoy.

With a game like Need For Speed, however, which through all of its numerous iterations across almost every video game platform sold worldwide over the past 20 years (the original The Need for Speed title debuted in 1994) has never had a consistent storyline or named characters, the challenge is much more difficult.These games are more or less all about collecting and driving progressively faster cars on progressively more difficult courses. Not a whole lot of built-in drama there to work with.

Screenwriter John Gatins (Flight), working with his brother George, apparently approached this task by attempting to shoehorn as many overused plots and one-note characters as possible into a story that can fill time between car chases and stunts. They also don’t seem much concerned with pacing or balance — Need For Speed takes almost half of its running time just to introduce all its characters and establish setup and backstory. Even with a few obligatory race scenes tossed into that lengthy preamble, by that point it’s hard to care much what happens next.

Give director Scott Waugh (Act of Valor) some credit, though. He goes against the grain of recent car-centric action films by avoiding lots of computer-generated crashes and stunts and sticking with practical effects. It’s an ambitious effort, and at the very least the cars themselves and the stunts look more authentic and believable. Does this make the races and chases any more thrilling? Not particularly — don’t be surprised if while you’re watching it you’re reminded of films highlighted by better car chase sequences such as Bullitt, Speed, and Ronin. It just requires less of a suspension of disbelief, unlike the aforementioned Fast and the Furious films, which almost bank upon how much incredulity they can get out of the audience with each new series entry. The result in those cases are films that are at least memorable, if not believable.

In the case of Need For Speed, however, the most memorable sequence in the film has nothing to do with the driver or the cars or the pretty girl sidekick, but instead with a member of the supporting cast stripping down naked in the middle of an office building for all to see and enjoying the reactions he gets. Pretty telling about the rest of the film, isn’t it?

It should also be telling that, in this age of marketing across multiple platforms and ubiquitous video game tie-ins to prospective movie blockbusters, Electronic Arts, the franchise’s publisher, didn’t develop a Need For Speed title specifically tied to this film or incorporating some of the film’s elements. Need For Speed the game franchise is easily the longest-running and most profitable racing game franchise in history — the twenty titles in the series have sold close to 200 million copies, and made EA a lot of money in its two decades of existence. It’s almost as though even they knew the film would be a lost cause, and thus developing a game to go along with it would be destined to be a fiasco.

If that really was the case, then boy, were they right.

Score: 2 out of 5

Need For Speed
Starring Aaron Paul, Dominic Cooper, Imogen Poots, Ramon Rodriguez, Rami Malek, Scott Mescudi, Dakota Johnson, Harrison Gilbertson and Michael Keaton. Directed by Scott Waugh.
Running Time: 130 minutes
Rated PG-13 for sequences of reckless street racing, disturbing crash scenes, nudity and crude language.