At some point recently, Hollywood film producers clearly decided the video game console was the latest thing to adapt into feature movies by the barrel load.
There have been a number of films based on video games, but most adaptations have not worked. Resident Evil is somehow still having movies made despite the films being almost universally unpopular, while Doom, Lara Croft, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat and Super Mario Brothers have all spawned films that tanked with critics.
Yet the next few years will see an explosion in titles. A number of adaptations are in the works, with Angry Birds, Rachet & Clank, Assassin's Creed, World of Warcraft, Mass Effect, The Last of Us, Uncharted, Shadow of the Colossus and the more recent Lara Croft and Mortal Kombat reboots are all set for cinematic releases in the next few years.
While a Grand Theft Auto game might be the crossover name, the two other main video driving games are set for adaptation. Gran Turismo has only just been greenlit, but trying to steal a charge on the use of video games to tap into the Fast and the Furious' stranglehold on car-action is the EA title Need for Speed.
Somehow the 6th installment of TF&F was one of 2013's highest grossing movies, so clearly the market is there. But transforming what is essentially a racing game into a 2hr10 movie is not going to be easy. Nevertheless, Dreamworks and EA decided to have a go anyway, with a plot centered around a former racer called Tobey Marshall (Aaron Paul), who is running a mechanics in upstate New York.
Very quickly, we're introduced to Marshall's gang of mechanics and machineheads, along with the racing and the financial perils they are in. This leads to a "deal with the devil", who here is Indy 500 racer and car upgrades mogul Dino Brewster (Dominic Cooper), who offers a vintage Ford Mustang that Carroll Shelby worked on just before his death.
With no cash, they get to work on the car, and successfully sell it for $2.7million with a 25% cut to Julia (Imogen Poots), who is working on behalf of a mystery billionaire. But Dino is still not happy and challenges Tobey and his sidekick Little Pete (Harrison Gilbertson) to a race for the money inside three imported Koenigseggs.
The film takes a turn for the tragic when Little Pete is crashed into by Dino, leading to the car flipping 12 times before going over a bridge, into a ravine and bursting into flames. Dino duly frames Tobey and he's chucked in jail for two years. Its a bold and slightly odd step to do this early on, not least given its only been a few months since the tragic and early death of Fast & Furious star Paul Walker, who died in a fiery car crash in Los Angeles just after Thanksgiving.
In the hands of a different script-writer, this plot point could have led to something like Breaking Bad on wheels. There were many times over the meth drama's run when Paul's character Jessie Pinkman lost someone that its a small wonder he wasn't mentally shot to pieces long before the end of the drama.
Instead, he gets out and, stone-cold serious, decides he wants to challenge Dino to a race. With Julia in tow, he borrows the vintage Mustang and goes for an epic drive from New York to San Francisco in 45 hours to register for a high-stakes car race organised by recluse DJ Monarch (Michael Keaton).
Along the way it takes in Detroit, Nebraska, the Grand Canyon and Bonneville Salt Flats, which clearly means someone is not reading the maps properly. It also takes in a variety of stunts, annoying other road users, hijacking helicopters, mid-road refuelling, an aerial stunt updating the famous ending to Thelma & Louise and eventually culminates in an angry exchange at a San Francisco hotel.
The journey plays like a po-faced update of how one might just play a regular game on one of the many dozen Need for Speed titles. Its unbreakingly, almost stiflingly, serious - almost enough to overlook potholes. For example, the breathless ease in which Tobey's air support Benny (Kid Cudi) is able to nick aerial vehicles is never fully explained, not to mention how quickly he appears to get from one place to another.
This is not the only plothole you could slide through. While we're led to believe the animosity is down to Dino being with Tobey's ex-girlfriend Anita (Dakota Johnson), the gap is never filled in, and the mutual hatred is never fully explained.
Dino is certainly given a very unsympathetic, almost loathsome appeal, but is also made to look incredibly stupid by keeping the evidence that implicates him in shortcut form on his work computer. It feels in many ways that his character required a lot more fleshing out.
Eventually, it winds up with the big race, but by then, a number of plot points have become eminently predictable. The race itself even has a predictable feel, almost as if you're just watching a big live-action remake of the game, or a version of Mario Kart where police carts have replaced banana peels.
That's not to say the plot is the mess everyone describes it as. The "revenge thriller" premise is a staple of expensive multiplex filler, and the motivation "he got away with killing my best friend" is as pure a motivational hatred as you can want. This motivation can certainly explain a number of absurd failings of reason by the main characters, even if it often struggles to convince as it continues.
In a way, the gaudy fun of a cross-country road trip and winning a dangerous car race is stifled by this serious cloak. It could just embrace its place as a showroom for expensive performance race cars, and it certainly does show off what car geeks will have paid their money to see - the likes of the Bugatti Veyron, the Lamborghini Aventador, and the aforementioned Mustangs and Koenigsegg's rushing around at miles per hour narrowly avoiding police cars and normal cars, and flying down turf.
But for those who fancy a bit more substance, its disappointing to see it believe its own substance too readily, and ends up going nowhere fast.
Its not a barren desert that many said it was. Aaron Paul's first major role after Breaking Bad does see him at least embrace a slightly less tormented existence, and he does do quite well with such meagre rations, while Imogen Poots certainly holds her own within such an orgy of testosterone and petrol fumes.
Much has also been made of its refusal to use CGI, with the cast all taking stunt driving lessons and dummy shells made of the real cars to do the explosions for real. Its certainly more authentic then all manner of random and pointless exploding cars that usually pad out these things.
But at the end of the day, this could have been one of two things - a film that finally shows its possible to add character, plot and something compelling to the macho automotive extravaganza film world, or a film that proves its possible to make a good solid movie out of the video game medium.
There were many possible turns on the highway towards its development, but it simply was content to be a midlane hogger. Its a surprisingly acceptable film but it could have been so much more.
2.5/5
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