Guilty Pleasure No. 117: Gone in 60 Seconds (dir. by Dominic Sena)

Posted on May 22, 2026 by Arleigh

There is a specific, almost alchemical quality to the late 1990s and early 2000s era of Nicolas Cage as an action star. Before the internet turned every one of his performances into a meme and before his financial troubles led him down the rabbit hole of direct-to-video oddities, Cage was genuinely one of the most exciting and weirdly compelling action heroes on the planet. From The Rock in 1996 to Con Air in 1997 and Face/Off in 1997, he delivered a holy trinity of high-octane insanity that no other actor could have pulled off. By the time the calendar flipped to 2000, Cage was at the peak of his powers, and director Dominic Sena’s Gone in 60 Seconds arrived as both a victory lap and a slight exhale. It is not as unhinged as Face/Off nor as tightly wound as The Rock, but it is a perfect snapshot of its moment: a glossy, MTV-infused car heist flick that smells like gasoline, leather, and late-90s hubris. And while it has plenty of shortcomings, Gone in 60 Seconds has earned its place not in the pantheon of great action cinema, but in that more beloved hall of fame: the Guilty Pleasure.

The plot is as simple as a carburetor. Cage plays Randall “Memphis” Raines, a legendary car thief who has supposedly gone straight, now living a quiet life designing hybrid engines. But when his reckless younger brother Kip, played with sweaty desperation by Giovanni Ribisi, botches a job for a ruthless British gangster named Raymond Calitri (Christopher Eccleston at his sleaziest), Memphis is forced back into the life he left behind. The task is absurdly impossible: steal 50 specific luxury cars in a single weekend, or Calitri will kill Kip. That’s right, fifty cars. In three days. The film never really bothers to explain the logistics of storing or delivering that many vehicles, but that’s not the point. The point is the ride, the revving engines, and the way Cage stares at a 1967 Shelby GT500 named Eleanor like she’s the ghost of a lost lover. That car is the real star, and the film knows it.

Dominic Sena, who previously directed Cage in the underrated road thriller Kalifornia, brings a music video sensibility to the proceedings. Gone in 60 Seconds is drenched in late-90s visual tics: slow-motion shots of hubcaps spinning, golden sunsets glaring off polished chrome, and a soundtrack that alternates between nu-metal grooves and bluesy rock. The editing is fast but not confusing, and the heist sequences have a rhythmic, almost choreographed feel. You never believe for a second that Memphis and his crew—a motley collection of oddballs played by Robert Duvall, Vinnie Jones, and a very underutilized Angelina Jolie—can actually pull off fifty thefts without the entire LAPD catching on. But the film operates on movie logic. Cars are hotwired in seconds, police radio chatter is effortlessly avoided, and every chase defies the laws of physics. It is pure fantasy, and that is exactly why it works as a guilty pleasure.

Now, let’s talk about Cage. In 2000, he was still riding the high of that legendary late-90s run, and Gone in 60 Seconds fits neatly into his brand of action star as tortured romantic. Memphis Raines is not the coked-up lunatic Castor Troy or the shouty Stanley Goodspeed. He is weary, melancholic, and trying to be honorable in a dishonorable profession. Cage plays him with a hangdog sincerity that is surprisingly effective. When he talks to Eleanor, stroking her steering wheel and whispering about how she tests her drivers, he is utterly committed. There is no irony, no winking at the camera. That is the secret to Cage’s enduring appeal in this era: he treats absurd material with the same intensity he would bring to a Shakespeare soliloquy. The action sequences—especially the climactic chase where Eleanor leaps over a drawbridge—showcase Cage’s physicality and willingness to do real stunt work. He sells the danger and the desperation. You believe that this man would risk everything for a car, and that belief makes the film’s silliness palatable.

But let’s be honest about the shortcomings, because Gone in 60 Seconds has plenty. The middle act drags considerably. For a movie about stealing fifty cars, there is a surprising amount of standing around in warehouses and having conversations about “respecting the machine.” Angelina Jolie’s character, Sara, is Memphis’s ex-girlfriend and a fellow thief, but she is given almost nothing to do except look cool in leather and exchange tepid romantic banter with Cage. The chemistry between them is nonexistent. Christopher Eccleston’s Calitri is a one-note villain who likes opera and cruelty, and his final defeat is laughably abrupt. Delroy Lindo plays a dogged detective, but he is so incompetent that he never generates real tension. The film’s central gimmick—the ticking clock of fifty cars in three days—is inconsistently tracked, and by the final act, you have no idea how many cars are left or why it still matters. The dialogue is also gloriously corny. Lines like “Ride or die” and “Respect the car, man” are delivered with such straight faces that they circle back around to being endearing.

And yet, Gone in 60 Seconds earns its status as a guilty pleasure because it understands exactly what it is. This is not a sophisticated heist thriller like Heat or a gritty crime drama. It is a shiny, high-budget B-movie about a man and his car, and it leans into that identity without apology. The final twenty-minute chase sequence is genuinely thrilling, with real cars being destroyed and practical stunts that modern CGI could never replicate. Eleanor getting airborne, landing hard, and somehow still running is a moment of pure cinematic joy. The sound design—the roar of that V8 engine, the screech of tires on asphalt—is visceral and satisfying. And Cage’s performance, even when the script lets him down, holds the whole thing together. He is the anchor that keeps the film from floating away into utter nonsense.

Looking back from today’s perspective, Gone in 60 Seconds is a time capsule of a very specific moment. It captures the tail end of the late-90s obsession with extreme sports, tuner culture, and the idea that cars had souls. It also captures Nicolas Cage at a fascinating crossroads: still an A-list action star, still capable of opening a blockbuster, but already showing the signs of the wonderful weirdness that would later define his career. This film is not his best, not by a long shot, but it is one of his most rewatchable. You put it on when you want to turn your brain off, hear some great engine noises, and watch a sweaty, sincere Nic Cage talk to a Shelby like she is his long-lost sweetheart. That is the definition of a guilty pleasure. It is not good in the traditional sense, but it is fun. And sometimes, fun is enough.

Previous Guilty Pleasures

Terminator: Genisys (Official Trailer)

Posted on December 4, 2014 by Arleigh

I’m not sure if the 5th Terminator film is a prequel or a sequel. Time travel and paradoxes and all that jazz sure make it difficult to figure that out.

Now, what we do know is that Terminator: Genisys (whoever came up with that title should be shot) will take things even farther than the first film which is suppose to kickoff a divergent timeline that makes the first four films a moot point.

So, this means that Terminator: Genisys may be both prequel and sequel, but also a reset of the whole franchise. See what I mean about confusing.

Here’s to hoping that screenwriters Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier have a better handle on all this jumbled time travel and resetting stuff.

Terminator: Genisys is set for July 1, 2015 release date.

Review: World War Z (dir. by Marc Forster)

Posted on June 25, 2013 by Arleigh

I’ll get this out of the way and just say it: World War Z the film pretty much has nothing in common with the acclaimed novel of the same name by author Max Brooks (reviewed almost at the very beginning of the site). Ok, now that we have that out of the way it’s time to get to the important part and that’s how did the film version turn out on it’s own merits.

World War Z was a film that took the long, winding and rough road to finally get to the big-screen. Whether it was the five different writers brought in to work on the script (J. Michael Straczynski of Babylon 5 fame came onboard first with Christopher McQuarrie coming unofficially to help tighten a few scenes in the end) to the massive changes made to the original source material that was bound to anger the fans of the novel, the film by Marc Forster had an uphill climb to accomplish even before the final product even came to market.

I was as surprised as man others were that the finished product was better than I had anticipated. Some had very low expectations about World War Z coming in due to the rumors and news reports coming in about the problems during production, but it doesn’t change the fact that the unmitigated disaster predicted by every film blogger and critic beforehand never came to fruition.

World War Z might not have been what fans of the novel had wanted it to be, but when seen on it’s own merit the film was both exciting and tension-filled despite some flaws in the final script and use of well-worn horror tropes.

The film begins with a visual montage interspersing scenes of nature (particularly the swarming, hive-like behavior of certain animals like birds, fish, and insects), alarmist news media reporting and the mindless celebrity-driven entertainment media that’s so big around the world. From there we’re introduced to the main protagonist of the film in one Gerry Lane (played by Brad Pitt) and his family. We see that the Lane family definitely love and care for each other with his wife Karin (Mireille Enos in the supportive wife role) and their two young daughters, Rachel and Constance. The film could easily have spent a lot of time establishing this family and their relationship towards each other, but we move towards the film’s first major sequence pretty much right after the opening. It’s this choice to not linger on the characters too long that becomes both a strength and a weakness to the film’s narrative throughout.

World War Z finally shows why it’s not your typical zombie film with it’s first major sequence in the center of downtown Philadelphia as Gerry and his family sees themselves in bumper-to-bumper traffic. As they wait there are some subtle hints that something might just be somewhat awry ahead of them as we see more and more police racing towards some sort of emergency ahead of the family and more and more helicopters flying overhead. There’s a brief lull in the scene before all hell breaks loose and the film’s zombie apocalypse aspect goes from 0 straight to 11 in a split second.

It’s this sequence of all-encompassing chaos overtaking a major metropolitan city seen both on the ground through the eyes of Gerry Lane and then on flying overhead wide shots of the city that gives World War Z it’s epic scope that other zombie films (both great and awful) could never truly capture. It’s also in this opening action sequence that we find the film’s unique take on the tried-and-true zombie. While not the slow, shambling kind that was described in the novel, these fast-movers (owes a lot more on the Rage-infected from 28 Days Later) bring something new to the zomgie genre table by acting like a cross between a swarm of birds or insects with the rapidly infectious nature of a virus.

These zombies do not stop to have a meal of it’s victims once they’ve bitten one but instead rapidly moves onto the next healthy human in order to spread the contagion it carries. We even get an idea of how quickly a bitten victim dies and then turns into one of “Zekes” as a soldier has ended up nicknaming them. It’s this new wrinkle in the zombie canon that adds to the film’s apocalyptic nature as we can see just how the speed of the infection and the swarm-like behavior of the zombies could easily take down the emergency services of not just a city and state but of entire nations.

World War Z works best when it doesn’t linger too long between action sequences. Trying to inject some of the themes and ideas that made the novel such a joy to read only comes off as an uncomfortable attempt to try and placate fans of the novel. When we get scenes like Philadelphia in settings like Jerusalem and, in smaller scales but no less tense, like in South Korea and on a plane, the film works as a nice piece of summer action fare. This works in the first two thirds of the film but a sudden shift in the final third in Cardiff, Wales could be too jarring of a tonal shift in storytelling for some.

While the change from epic and apocalyptic to intimate and contained in the final third was such a sudden change this sequence works, but also shows just how bad the original final third of the film was to make this sudden change. It proves to be somewhat anticlimactic when compared to the epic nature of the first two-thirds of the film. We get a final third that’s more your traditional horror film. In fact, one could easily see World War Z as two different films vying for control and, in the end, the two halves having to try to co-exist and make sense.

World War Z doesn’t bring much of the sort of societal commentaries and themes that we get from the very best of zombie stories, but it does bring the sort of action that we rarely get from zombie films. The film actually doesn’t come off as your traditional zombie film, but more like a disaster story that just happened to have zombies as the root cause instead of solar flares, sudden ice age or alien invasion.

So, while World War Z only shares the title with the source novel it was adapting and pretty much not much else, the film wasn’t the unmitigated disaster that had been predicted for months leading up to it’s release. It’s a fun, rollercoaster ride of film that actually manages to leave an audience wanting to know more instead of being bombarded with so much action that one becomes desensitized and bored by it. There’s no question that a better film, probably even a great one, lurks behind the fun mess that’s the World War Z we’ve received, but on it’s own the film more than delivers on the promise that most films during the summer fails to achieve and that’s to entertain.