By Jeremy Hannaford (Contributor) – Email
Print Edition: March 19, 2014
A calm, peaceful panning shot of California’s Redwood forests is slowly broken by the roar of engines from multi-million-dollar cars racing along the secluded roads. The hum of a powerful engine soon reaches a peak as the speakers let out the thunderous boom of oil, fuel, and carbon fibre.
All of this sounds great, but this feeling of reckless speed comes with a mess of wooden characters, cheesy dialogue, and a plot more absurd than the idea of a Ford Mustang jumping an off-route embankment.
EA’s Need for Speed product is an excellent racing series that has produced some fantastic titles. It has also produced some that left much to be desired. Need for Speed the film seems to dip into the latter category. Some of the narrative follows the story from Need for Speed: the Run but the majority takes its own path. It follows the story of Toby (Aaron Paul) who is released after serving time for a crime he did not commit. He embarks on a quest to gain entrance into a secret high-stakes street race that will somehow tie into proving his innocence. The overall script is so muddled that tasks that were thought to be extremely important are completed and sometimes forgotten before the final climax.
Throughout much of the pre-release interviews and press coverage, the cast and crew of Need for Speed have sold the movies as being completely real, never using special effects. And this is pretty much true. All the races and stunts are done without the assistance of special effects and this builds a feeling of realistic danger and adrenaline. The use of in-board dash cameras and high quality GoPro footage develops a good sense of immersion and excites inner speed demons. Excellent driving choreography and stunt planning help make some races like the triple Koenigsegg race a heart-pumping thrill ride. But then the filmmakers proceed to believe their car-enthusiast audiences don’t know what they do about automotive engineering.
Enough viewings of BBC’s Top Gear will let you in on how ludicrous the speeds these cars are supposedly reaching are. While a Ford Mustang has several hundred horsepower under the hood and a sleek body design, there is no amount of fine tuning and attachments that could make one reach over 230 mph on a standard race track! In an attempt to up the ante and increase the intensity, they instead straight-up insult anyone who has any car sense. While the stunts are all real, anyone with a basic sense of physics knows it’s just insane. It’s one thing to push the realm of believeability, but these moments just break the connection with the viewer and waste our time.
As for elements of the games themselves, this film features something from almost all the major titles. The final race follows a track very similar to that of Criterion’s Hot Pursuit while the drifting sequences are reminiscent of Carbon or Underground. There is also the unusual appearance of the infamous Pro Street which Toby’s friends play on a gaming console early on in the movie. Thankfully this isn’t as obvious as it was in 2007’s Hitman.
While the film is adapted from the video games, it still tries to be its own product. This definitely gives the film more credibility, but that is thrown away when characters — like Kid Cudi — open their mouths and deliver cringe-worthy dialogue.
For a film about the search for high-velocity cars, Need for Speed moves as slowly as a snail. Clocking in at just over two hours, it drags along with unnecessary dialogue, unnecessary characters, and unnecessary plot points. So much of this film is filler and does nothing to offer a strong narrative, which honestly should be second in terms of the film’s purpose.
Need for Speed tries too hard, boasting outrageous speeds, hammy acting, and brain-dead plot devices. While it is an honourable testament to stunt drivers and performers, it forgets itself and goes too far. In the opening scene, there is a drive-in playing the classic car chase scene from Bullitt, starring Steve McQueen. This iconic chase is what Need For Speed strives and ultimately fails to be. As Jeremy Clarkson from Top Gear would say, this is rubbish.
