There are bad movies that are tons of fun to take apart in reviews. In fact, I’ve written quite a few of those here at the blog. But every so often you get a film like Need For Speed, a movie so dull and laborious that you have to summon up the strength of a limited edition muscle car engine in order to talk about the film. In short, Need For Speed is a terrible reckless film that even the least stringent of moviegoers will dislike.
Tobey Marshall (Aaron Paul) is just your average car racing owner of a garage repair show in New York. When his rival (Dominic Cooper) arrives in town things start to get a bit heated as they are forced to work together to restore a classic car. When a racing accident goes awry and Tobey receives the blame and jail time, he vows to avenge his friend…by breaking his parole and driving cross-country with a beautiful woman (Imogen Poots) to try to win an underground race ran by an elusive radio dj (Michael Keaton) and clear his name.
The issues with Need for Speed really emanate from what is a dreadful, clichéd riddled, careless script. While I am fully aware that this movie was based on a video game with little to no plot, how come the movie couldn’t have found one that was more coherent? Characters just waltz into this tale with backstories that are never explored, motivations that change on a whim, and finding ways to make the audience roll their eyes. How are you going to have a rivalry wherein the audience isn’t informed of what happened in their pasts? Worse than this, the movie seems to think that it’s not following a formula yet peddles in clichés at every turn. The simple girl who has never tasted adventure falls for the bad boy? It’s the main crux of much of this narrative and stretches the plausibility of the goings on. What hurts the most is that there were times when the movie doesn’t abide by clichés but it ends up putting a chink in the story. They set up a love triangle between the two main rivals and then have it go some completely different way that undercuts what they were trying to build.
Additionally, this movie sets up this climactic race as some kind of mammoth thing when in reality it amounts to little if anything really tangible. If Tobey was so concerned about proving his innocence, why wouldn’t he, I don’t know, try to find the car Dino was driving instead? Instead this movie allows him to stumble into finding that car and then drive in a race which will end with him going back to jail…whet? Also, that race basically turns Tobey and Dino into murderers without any remorse and destroys whatever sympathy we would have had for either person.
On a more technical level, Need for Speed is incredibly ambitious in construction yet poor in execution. When I left the theater I marveled at how the only time the film got my pulse racing was when a dog jumped out at Tobey as opposed to the numerous car chases. This probably has something to do with the fact that even the simplest race seemed to push the boundaries of suspension of disbelief. The editing was poor and much of the mechanics of what they were doing don’t hold up upon further inspection.
The acting…le sigh. I guess this movie wasn’t asking for much in the way of acting but my goodness. Aaron Paul was forgettable, Dominic Cooper was like evil incarnate but blandly so, I spent most of the film cringing at the line readings of supporting players like Rami Malek and Scott Mescudi, and Imogen Poots was doing her best Rachel Wiesz in The Mummy impression but with worse material and minimal acting chops. And Michael Keaton’s character as some kind of underground radio station host who waxes philosophical about cars and rivalries and sponsors some special race the characters have to go one slayed me, and not in a good way.
It’s a sad day when you go into a movie hoping for a turn your brain off, fun time and end up seeing something so bad you can’t even do that. Need for Speed is a poor movie in every respect and you should avoid it at all costs.
Grade: Ugh…. F (1 star)