I wasn’t sure about this movie as to whether renting it out or not, but curiosity got to me and I got a copy. I watched it this afternoon and now I’m glad I rented it! The film has fighting, violence, car chases, Angelina Jolie and loads of action. What more could a bloke want? Well, yes, sex, I know, well there is a bit of sex in the film but not enough to get excited over! This is the kind of film which you can relax in front of, forget about thinking of any plot and just watch all the action and special effects….a blokes movie then, and yes, I think it is, infact I’m sure it is. I’m trying not to offend any of you nice girlies out there (us blokes bow down to you lot, so why would I want to offend you!?) but it’s just jam packed with all the stuff us blokes love.
Now, I’ll give you a bit of the background of the film. However, if you don’t want to read that bit as you haven’t seen it yet, just skip to the end of the spoiler!
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Randall Raines (Nicolas Cage) is a retired highly respected car thief. He’s one of the best, the best of the best, but doesn’t dabble in that field anymore. He has found himself a new life and now works with kid’s and go karts. Raymond Calitri (Christopher Eccleston) is a criminal that you don’t want to get on the wrong side of. He is holding Kip (Giovanni Ribisi) who is Randall’s brother hostage and will kill him if he doesn’t get what he wants. The thing is, he wants 50 high class car’s stolen in 3 day’s. A big job, and the only person who can do it is Randall!
Randall doesn’t want to go back to the boosting business (nicking cars in other words) as he promised his mum that he would stop it and start a new life for himself. So, first of, he has to tell his mum what he is going to do and why he is going to do it. While he is back in his old town he meets up with the detective who chased him down while he was at the height of his boosting career and this detective will come down like a tonne of bricks on Randall if he find’s him doing anything that he shouldn’t do in the town.
Randall has to get his old gang of friends back to help him with the mighty task. Half of them are dead, a few are still alive but don’t want to know but in the end, gets a bunch of about 6 of them together including Sway (Angelina Jolie) who is his only love but broke it up when he was young and highly into the boosting business and also ‘The Sphinx’ (Vinnie Jones) who doesn’t seem to talk but is as solid as a brickhouse!
They then carry out their task with the ups and downs that anyone would come across boosting 50 high class cars within 3 days. There is planning, preparation and a lot of thought to go into how they are going to carry out the task, let alone the big task of hunting down the listed cars in the first place!
From here the film is non stop action and car chases and you can leave your brain down the side of your armchair with the empty box of popcorn as far as I’m concerned because you really don’t need it from here! That is of course unless your really thick and need to concentrate hard on an episode of snoopy!
The ending’s a good one, in my opinion anyway. You could see what was coming from the start of the film, but I think they knocked it off quite well!
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This film will have you thinking ‘well that aint very realistic, how can he just do that’. Well, you’d be right in thinking that. This film is not about realism, it’s about thrilling things and making you go ‘wow’ and maybe even giving you a bit of a adrenalin rush. If you like films with realism then don’t even bother watching the trailers before the film! It will be a complete waste of your time. Having said all that, if movies were all realism, wouldn’t they be boring, we’d pay £5 to go to the cinema’s and watch ourselves!
The camera effects in this film are very good. I personally liked the way the opening shots were carried out, giving you close up snippets of family photographs and cars that you would later be introduced to in the film. The camera angles and effects were also very good, letting you see exactly what’s going on in the film. Even better, they don’t try to hard with loads of special camera actions that leave your eyes trying to catch up with the Television as you whiz round someone’s head!
Another good bit of this movie is the soundtrack. Ok, you don’t have any full blown songs played in the movie, but you do have snippets of songs and I’m sure that the song in the opening scenes was by moby…hang on and I’ll try to find out! Yes, it must have been, A track called ‘flower’ by moby. That set me up for the film as I love Moby anyway, so could tell this was a quality film in terms of soundtrack. Other songs you will find will be:
Leave Home – Chemical Brothers
Da Rockwilder – Method Man
Never Gonna Come Back Down – BT
Stop the Rock – Apollo Four Forty
Painted on my heart – Cult (this one would tempt me to by the soundtrack in itself!)
Machismo – Gomez
So, it has a pretty good range of different styles of music mixed in with the film to give it a very good atmosphere!
The special effects were pretty good too. They weren’t the type of special effects like in The Mummy Returns where you could tell a mile away that CGI was used, but more special effects in the sense of the car chases and crashes. One bit I liked was when Randall was being chased by someone through a dockyard, a second later, he was no longer being chased because the car had be jolted through a wall by one of those cranes with the ball and chain used to knock down houses. Was something completely different that I had never seen in a film before and the special effects used were really good.
So overall then, if you want a film that stimulates your mind and has a great plot, then don’t even look at the cover of this one. On the other hand, if your like me and plot’s get a bit confusing within the first 5 minutes of the film and you just want something to relax with that keeps you watching and gives you thrills and spills (yes, I split my can of coke all over me mums new carpet, I had to clean that one up quick smart I can tell ya!) then this is definitely a film I would recommend to fill your needs.
It’s going to get 4 out of 5 from me!