This movie is stupid – let’s just go ahead and get that out of the way right here at the beginning. It’s dumb with a capital “Duh!” If you put an infinite number of monkeys in a room with an infinite number of laptops, none of them would ever manage to compose anything as silly as the script for Need For Speed. I’m concerned that talented screenwriters whose heartfelt intelligent projects have all been rejected by the major studios will see that this script actually got filmed, lose all faith in humanity, and dazedly wander off into the wilderness never to be seen again.
What makes the writing so bad, you ask? How about the fact that everything is so generically plotted that the cast could simply have appeared on screen in white t-shirts labeled with their character descriptions rather than bothering with names. Here, I’ll prove it: the story begins with The Hero who, along with his sidekicks, Cool Black Guy, Serious Latino Guy, Crazy Latino Guy, and Dead Guy, spends his days custom modifying cars and his evenings participating in illegal street races. Unfortunately, the garage he inherited from his father is on the verge of closing (the most talented can never pay their bills in these kind of movies for some reason), so when The Villain arrives with a lucrative offer to rebuild The Hero’s father’s one-of-a-kind Product Placement, The Hero agrees to it despite the fact that The Villain is both a snobbish bore and is dating The Hero’s Ex-Girlfriend (who, by the way, also happens to be Dead Guy’s sister).
Things go well at first and The Hero manages to rebuild and sell the Product Placement to a potential Love Interest. Offended that The Hero made the sell on his own, however, The Villain challenges The Hero to a race, winner to take all the proceeds of the sale. And because The Villain just happens to own three illegal racing cars instead of only one or two, he offers to let Dead Guy drive one and join in the fun. After a furious back and forth which leaves The Hero in the lead as the finish line approaches, The Villain makes a dangerous move which sends Dead Guy plummeting off a bridge to his doom. The Hero, being a hero, forgets the race and rushes to the side of his friend, allowing The Villain to escape the scene and pin the blame for Dead Guy’s demise on The Hero.
Two years later, The Hero emerges from prison with a plan. All he needs to do is reassemble his old crew (minus Dead Guy, of course – this isn’t a zombie flick), obtain a fast car, and score an invitation to the DeLeon, the grand mother of all underground street races. There, he hopes to prove his innocence and bring wheeled justice to The Villain, who is also participating. But there’s a few catche – to get to the DeLeon, The Hero must break parole, which won’t go over well with the police. On top of that, once The Villain finds out The Hero is coming, he offers a reward to anyone who can stop him. And finally, the fastest car The Hero can think of is the Product Placement, and the Love Interest won’t part with it unless she’s allowed to come along on the cross country trip. Who could have seen that development coming?
Well, everyone of course. For a movie centered around a subculture that custom modifies everything they touch, there amazingly isn’t a single part of Need For Speed that isn’t straight off the assembly line. If it was revealed that the script for this movie ever got past the outline stage before filming started, it would come as a huge surprise. It is THAT stupid.
That being said, stupid can have its occasional charms. Need For Speed is actually okay if all you’re in the mood for is some mindless action fare. While stuntman turned director Scott Waugh may not be able to overcome the shortcomings of the script where his actors are concerned, he does bring a certain flair to any scene involving a car. A lot of the pre-publicity for
Need For Speed touted the fact that all of the vehicles in the movie are real and very little CGI was utilized in the racing sequences, and it has to be admitted that the approach works in the movie’s favor. The characters may never feel real, but the racing sure does. Gearheads buying a ticket to get their car fix should leave the theater satisfied.
It also helps that none of the actors ever seem to be taking the proceedings too seriously. Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul is smart enough to realize his role as The Hero is no Jesse Pinkman, and so he breezes through the film with a barely concealed smirk. All of the supporting cast, unburdened with having to carry any of the “emotional” scenes, simply act as if they’re in a comedy. In fact, once Imogen Poots’ aggressively cute Love Interest climbs into the passenger seat of the Product Placement, it becomes apparent that what Scott Waugh really wanted to direct instead of a standard revenge and redemption flick was a remake of Smokey and The Bandit, the 1977 hit comedy helmed by stuntman turned director Hal Needham.
The problem is that, as Jesus once pointed out, “no one can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” While Needham was free to do as he pleased with his movie, Waugh is shackled to the trappings of his source material, the incredibly successful Need For Speed video game series. That means every time the movie actually starts to get fun like Waugh apparently desired, it’s then obliged to try and shoehorn in something edgy and serious. The movie is being forced to serve two masters, and the one which demands the whole plot with The Villain sucks the life right out of the film because nobody’s heart is in it. Need For Speed would have been better served if, instead of seeking vengeance, Aaron and Imogen had just been hauling beer like Burt and Sally.
In a world he didn’t create, in a time he didn’t choose, one man looks for signs of God in the world by… watching movies. When he’s not reviewing new releases for Aleteia, David Ives spends his time exploring the intersection of low-budget/cult cinema and Catholicism at The B-Movie Catechism.
