Al's Omniflick: Need For Speed

Monday, March 17, 2014

Need For Speed

Dir. Scott Waugh. Starring: Aaron Paul and Imogen Poots.

I would include a spoiler alert here but will that be necessary for anyone having seen a preview to this hokum? Doesn't the trailer tell it all? And isn't this movie justly dismissed as a Fast and Furious rip-off? Answers: No. Yes. Yes.

Is this really what Aaron Paul (fresh from Breaking Bad), intended as a follow-up to the hit TV series in which he played a critical role? Maybe the money was too obscene to pass up or maybe he wanted to clear his acting palate with something bland and derivative before he moves up and away from Need for Speed.

Here is the synopsis; culled from the IMDB site because I'm too lazy at the moment to bother summing up this offal:

Hobbs has Dom and Brian reassemble their crew in order to take down a mastermind who commands an organization of mercenary drivers across 12 countries. Payment? Full pardons for them all.

Did you get that? The movie is really one long chase scene with heaps of preposterousness thrown in to distract us from the dreary fact that this has all been done--and much better I might add--in the Fast and Furious series.

Make no mistake; the Fast and Furious series specializes in over-the-top, absurd and impossible action scenes too but the difference between that franchise and this franchise-hope-to-be-but-mercifully-won't is that the former makes it all entertaining and fun and stylish while the latter is just loud and fast and uninspired. What is particularly interesting about the F and F franchise--now heading into a seventh incarnation--is that it leaves the audience feeling the series has only just begun and a lot more won't be unwelcome.

Aaron Paul does his best in the lead and is a convincing car-stud but stock characters and a chick side-kick (Imogen Poots) with a British accent who shares not a modicum of chemistry with the leading man don't help. Who can blame them? It's almost as if the story and action were dreamed up by studio executives standing around a Coke machine in a company lounge. You know you're in a bad action movie when the scenes crafted to generate the most thrills actually lull a movie-goer to heavy slumber, which is what happened to me. Upon waking and seeing the action on screen, I said to myself "Oh, the movie is still playing." It's also alarming when upon being roused from a delightful snooze one finds one hasn't lost a thread in the storyline.

The plot always seemed vague to me while watching; the quest seemed too silly to be worth remembering or taken seriously. When it ended I was relieved to be leaving the theater; my fatigue not the product of a thrilling adventure but of unmitigated boredom. If I had only not bothered to wake up in the middle of the movie, I might have slept until the final credits but that would have been doing what the filmmakers intended.

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On DVD

Fury (1936)

Director: Fritz Lang

Though we might normally think of the films M and Metropolis when director Fritz Lang becomes the topic of conversation, less known is the legendary director's work in Hollywood. Having fled the ever-growing menace of Nazi Germany for America in the early 1930s', Lang eventually found himself under contract for MGM.

Though his work in Hollywood is very uneven, one standout is Fury, from 1936. Starring Spencer Tracy and Sylvia Sydney, the film's condemnation of mob justice seems spectacularly daring now, considering lynching was still a reality in Depression-era America. We don't see one black person in the film entire but we know precisely for whom Lang film is sympathetic.

Spencer Tracy plays Joe Wilson, who is arrested in a small town while en route to meet his fiance, Katherine (Sylvia Sydney). Suspected of being part of a kidnapping of a little girl, Wilson is arrested on the flimsiest evidence. While he sits in cell; angry and indignant, Katherine is puzzled as to why her fiance hasn't arrived at their prearranged meeting place.

But Wilson's fortunes take a darker and more dangerous turn when a mob--already on edge--is roused to anger. Egging one another on, the mob moves on the jailhouse where Wilson is being held. As the angry gathering becomes a mass, drawing citizens of the town into their swelling numbers, a lynch-mob begins to form. The sheriff, determined to see due process take its course, refuses their forceful demands. Becoming angrier and angrier and bolder and bolder, the crowd storms the jail, overwhelming the sheriff and his deputies. Unable to unlock the cell doors to reach Wilson, the mob sets the jailhouse ablaze as an alternate method of lynching.

Katherine, having arrived on the scene, faints when she sees flames engulf the cell where her fiance is held.

In spite of the mob acting as a faceless entity, its principle members are brought to trial though the town and the defendants maintain a conspiracy of silence, hoping to escape convictions and censure.

A sure acquittal seems imminent until damning evidence assures their guilt. When the majority of the members receive death sentences, Wilson turns up at his brothers, having survived the fire. Knowing the public is unaware of his survival, he vows to stay in hiding to ensure the mob conspirators are executed.

The scene where Katherine, nearly insane from grief, comes face to face with Joe is a powerful moment in the film. As she slowly recovers from her state, she realizes Joe's vindictive determination to see the mob hang is in itself a great injustice.

The story climaxes during a stirring courtroom scene that brings the fascinating story to a close.

I would have never expected Hollywood to make a statement as powerful as Fury made in 1936. Given the fact that lynchings in America at the time went unpunished, the movie railed bravely, in spite of the main character being white rather than black, against what was then the status quo. The Oxbow Incident would make a similar and commensurately powerful statement seven years later.

The film's willingness to peer into the darker side of American life could be partly attributed to Lang, who co-wrote the story and who was no stranger to exploring the darker side of humanity. Having seen evil flower in his home country, it makes sense Lang would choose to tell this story.

Spencer Tracy and Sylvia Sydney give wonderful, emotionally layered performances. Katherine's near descent into madness is depicted touchingly by Sydney. To see Tracy's mild-mannered Wilson become angry and vengeful is heartbreaking.

Even watching Lang's film on a small screen does little to diminish its power. Weeks after the viewing, I still can't shake its indelible images or its angry indictment of one of America's great crimes. One couldn't devise a better title than one it was given eighty years ago. Fury indeed.