Nicolas Cage;
Photo courtesy of Touchstone Pictures/The Kobal Collection/Merrick
Morton
Fast and flashy cars, the box-office blockbuster
imprint of producer Jerry Bruckheimer and three previous Oscar
winners in the cast. What else could you want in a film?
Nicolas Cage, who took home the Academy's
best actor statue for "Leaving Las Vegas," plays Memphis Raines,
a master car thief gone straight who is forced back into the
auto boosting business to save his younger brother, Kip. It
seems the kid botched a deal with an international auto theft
ring to deliver 50 high-end
cars in three days.
With time running out and Kip's life on
the line, Memphis enlists his former crew to complete the
job. His Oscar-winning team includes Robert Duvall (best actor,
"Tender Mercies") as the operation coordinator and Angelina
Jolie (best supporting actress, "Girl, Interrupted") as Memphis'
ex-girlfriend, who just happens to also be a mechanic and
pretty good auto thief herself ... only in Hollywood.
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The caper is fast, fun and toward the
end filled with great chase scenes. Half the fun of the movie
is trying to keep track of all the cars. They include various
Mercedes, Ferraris, Porsches and a Lamborghini. On the domestic
side, look for a Hummer, several Cadillacs and a Plymouth
Hemi 'Cuda. Each vehicle is given a woman's name as code,
and the final car on the list is Eleanor, a 1967 Shelby GT
500 that Memphis tried to steal years before with disastrous
results. In the end, Memphis gets
Eleanor -- legally. Kip buys her as a gift for his brother.
Throughout the movie, it's hard not to
fantasize about how much fun it would be to slip behind the
wheel of one (or two or 20) of these great vehicles. And the
route to that automotive aspiration is the money message of
"Gone in 60 Seconds": You can get
a steal on your dream car if you know how to wheel and deal.
