Sometimes movies are exactly what you’d expect of them; when it’s a bad movie, that can actually be okay, so long as it has some redeeming features. If you were teenage male car-nut, the Need for Speed movie (leveraging the popularity and theme of the namesake video game by EA), then you would appreciate seeing rarefied super-cars on the big-screen. If you wanted something more than an action-packed, car-crash filled, movie with a typical American anti-hero hero story; then you should spend two hours of your time doing or watching something else.
Aaron Paul walked in front of the NfS cameras the day after wrapping shooting of the Breaking Bad TV series that made him famous. Though he trades his hoodie of the TV show for a leather jacket, not much was asked of the actor for the new character—hopefully we will see if he has a broader range of acting skills in future roles. The brooding anti-hero character has proven popular since James Dean‘s character in Rebel Without a Cause and is used to cliché-effect in NfS; well-done in a predictable fashion.
Since the cars were as much a star of the movie as the actors—bigger, actually—it is worth noting that this is a car-porn movie. They picked some of the most notable, to car-enthusiasts, examples of super-cars to represent. And, by “represent,” I mean faked… these cars were no more real than porn stars in the other movie genre. But they were well done, being one of the few unique aspects of the movie. However, they all get smashed up, which doesn’t show much respect for the reason which they’d chosen them in the first place—I guess that is typical of porn-stars.
Nothing about the story is based in any kind of reality. The actions of the characters barely makes any sense. But if you can fill in the story gaps with cliché assumptions and appreciate seeing super-car porn at speed, then your two hours won’t be completely wasted.
