I remember playing Need for Speed in the arcade of the Cinemark theater that my brother worked at in Victorville, CA. If memory serves me, this was the first racing arcade game that I played where you actually sit in a make-shift drivers seat with a steering wheel, gas and brake pedals, and a manual stick shift (should you choose to drive a manual transmission car) a raced against your friends. There was never a plot to game; you simply sat down in a “car” next to your buddy’s, dropped the quarters in and drove head-to-head with your friends. With no plot, how is it that Disney has made the same arcade game into a 130-minute worthwhile movie? Easy answer. They put some solid love and fun into it.
Aaron Paul, whom you might know as Jesse from Breaking Bad, plays our central character Tobey Marshall, a gear-head whose passed-down family garage is on the brink of going under. With nothing to lose and everything to gain, he takes a job from greasy competitor Dino Brewster (Dominic Cooper, Captain America) that will keep him, his garage and his employees afloat for a very long time. Through a long set-up intro to the movie’s real plot, Tobey and his friends are burned badly by Dino, so the rest of the movie lends itself to them delivery justice to Dino in the form of beating him a race – but not just any race. The race that Tobey wants to beat him at is an illegal, prestigious, invite-only race that’s being held on the opposite side of the country. With 48 hours to go, Tobey has to not only make it across the country, but he has to find out how to get invited.
Need for Speed isn’t trying to be like the Fast and Furious movies. That franchise is basically porn with cars – it presents cars in some completely unreal and fantastic manner. Those movies are spectacle – not that there’s anything wrong with that. I enjoy them quite a bit. But Need for Speed takes its time getting you invested in the characters and story. It doesn’t hang on unbelievable and absurd stunts. While the Fast and Furious movies are filled with those “yeah, right” moments, Need for Speed only has two. The extremely dangerous car-driving isn’t all that far off from reality, which makes it quite a bit more refreshing compared to the others car-based movies.
If you enjoy racing, fast cars, fun cross-country action and adventure, likeable characters and well-shot sequences of amazing cars pushing the limits, then give Need for Speed a chance.
(Photo credit: Buena Vista)
