Is there any contemporary actor more iconic than Nicolas Cage? Instantly identifiable and beloved by both mainstream audiences and cult aficionados, it’s hard to believe that there was a time when Nicolas Cage wasn’t considered a bankable leading man. While movies like Raising Arizona and Moonstruck established him as a quirky lead, in 1990, he made an action movie called Fire Birds, which was like Top Gun with helicopters and whiffed at the box office. He had a solid hit as a romantic lead in Honeymoon in Vegas. However, in 1995, the same year he delivered an Academy Award-winning performance in Leaving Las Vegas, he was still considered so minor of a star that David Caruso took top billing over him in their remake of Kiss of Death – which – by the way – was another flop. However, that all changed when uber producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer decided Cage had potential as an action hero, leading to his casting in Michael Bay’s The Rock. Playing a nerdy scientist who becomes an action hero under the tutelage of Sean Connery, the movie was rightly seen by many as a passing of the torch, and when it ended up being a box office hit, Cage was suddenly the hottest new action star in town.
He quickly followed it up with two more action movies in 1997, Con Air, which re-teamed him with Bruckheimer and revealed his new action hero physique – with some saying he looked like a hillbilly Jesus Christ on steroids (hell yeah) – and then John Woo’s Face/Off, thanks to the premise, allowed him to play both action hero AND villain, to the tune of big box office. However, Cage had a flop in 1998 when he tried to return to quirky leading man mode with Snake Eyes. That movie was shot in my hometown of Montreal, and by the end of the summer, it was shot in, seemingly everyone in town had a Nic Cage story, with tales of his shenanigans – which – I must say, were cool shenanigans and not asshole shenanigans – spreading far and wide. After his well-received Scorsese flick Bringing Out the Dead, Cage decided it was high time to return to the action genre, once again re-teaming with Jerry Bruckheimer for the subject of this week’s WTF – Gone in 60 Seconds.
The film is actually a remake of a cult seventies flick of the same name, which was directed by and starred a real-life stunt driver named H.B. Halicki who, sadly, died in a stunt gone awry while shooting the movie’s sequel. In the movie, Cage plays Memphis Raines, a legendary car thief who, after going straight, is blackmailed into stealing 50 cars in one night to save his neer-do-well brother, who’s gotten into significant debt to a British gangster played by Christopher Eccleston, who, in the twenty-five years since this was filmed, has not stopped complaining about how bad he found his performance in the movie was, even going to far as to say that before Doctor Who, people mostly recognized him from that film and would come up to him telling him how “shit” he was. Well, in a world where Edward Norton played the world’s dullest villain in another big car movie remake – The Italian Job – I have to disagree, but I digress
To steal all the cars, Memphis recruits a rogues gallery of car thieves, allowing the film to build up a kick-ass cast of character actors. First, you’ve got Robert Duvall as the grumpy mentor, Otto (get it?), Angelina Jolie as the requisite hot chick, Sway, who – natch – has some history with Memphis, Chi McBride as the funny black dude, James Duval and Scott Caan as the young upstarts, and best of all, Vinnie Jones as a menacing morgue attendant who moonlights as a thief, The Sphinx, who has no dialogue until the very end. Plus, you have Delroy Lindo and a very young Timothy Olyphant as cops, with both out to nab Memphis, even though Lindo and Cage have a burgeoning bromance that goes into overdrive towards the end.
Gone in 60 Seconds was almost certainly Jerry Bruckheimer’s attempt to make another Con Air, with it having the same writer, Scott Rosenberg, and a similar ensemble cast vibe, with everyone given their moment to shine, especially Vinnie Jones, who gets to reprise an infamous moment where he was snapped grabbing the testicles of a fellow football – or soccer to you yanks – player during a match in the eighties.
One thing the movie didn’t have was director Simon West, with Dominic Sena, who was best known for the Brad Pitt indie flick Kalifornia, directing. Sena directed some of the best music videos of the nineties, so he turned this one into an ultra slick programmer, with him going on to make the similarly shot Swordfish the next year in 2001. While Gone in 60 Seconds had a lot of things going for it, action fans did have a few big gripes with it back in 2000. For one, Bruckheimer was going for a teen audience, meaning it was a watered-down PG-13, so the action was confined to car chases, all of which were crazy over the top. It also came out hot on the heels of Mission Impossible 2, which, while mostly mocked now, was a massive blockbuster than summer and ate up a lot of the box office. That said, audiences wouldn’t be kept away, even if the movie is somewhat dated by all the Matrix-style CGI, which is weird to have in a car chase movie, and two really weird hairstyles on the two leads, with both Cage and Jolie sporting bleached blonde locks, with Jolie’s even done up in dreadlocks, which was a strange trend in 2000, as Cage’s old Face/Off co-star John Travolta also had them in Battlefield Earth. Jolie looks better with them, that’s for sure, even if all of her MANY fans tended to prefer her as a brunette, a style she’s mostly stuck with since then.
Twenty-five years after it came out, Gone in 60 Seconds has become something of a cult film, with folks appreciating the fact that it’s so clearly a product of its time, with you unlikely to find a movie – this movie was made in the year 2000 vibe – than this one. The soundtrack is incredibly evocative of the era, sporting tracks by both Crystal Method AND The Chemical Brothers, two bands I always confused with one another back then, and some classic funk tracks, with War’s Low Rider getting a special shout-out.
Surprisingly, the film wasn’t a huge financial success at the box office. It made just over $100 million domestically, which were Con Air numbers. Another $137 million overseas on a $90 million budget, but Disney, who released the film through their Touchstone label, managed to claim it lost something like $212 million thanks to a magical Hollywood practice called “Hollywood accounting,” where virtually no film goes into profit – EVER. Nevertheless, it has a big DVD hit in the early days of the format and has been reissued many times since- although still no 4K transfer (which also goes for The Rock – although Con Air’s gotten a 4K). Sadly, it would mark the end of a nice run of action movies Cage and Bruckheimer had made up to this point. They’d reteam plenty – with them doing the two National Treasure movies and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, but those two big tentpole family blockbusters, rather than action-driven programmers. Personally, I miss these kinds of movies, as they’ve gotten so over the top now, especially if you look at the Fast & Furious movies, then a flick about a crew stealing 50 cars almost seems quaint. While it’s not a classic like The Rock or Con Air, Gone in 60 Seconds is a good time.
