Movie Review

Need for Speed

I guess Aaron Paul needed a good paycheck because that’s all I could think about while trying to endure the atrocity of Need for Speed. The budget for this movie was $66 million, which leads me to believe the actor earned some amount of millions or close to it, unless the action set pieces cost much more than they look in the movie. Fans of his from television’s Breaking Bad are going to be sorely disappointed at just how dumb, lame, and worthless this action/thriller happens to be in execution. I guess they could or could’ve just read the bombardment of average-at-best reviews it has scored and knew that was coming anyway, and it seems quite a few people did because attendance isn’t strong. Normally an action movie like this would be critic-proof at the box office as not even the harshest reviewers would scare off certain types of people, but I’m glad the movie isn’t cashing in strongly.

Trailers made this flick seem like the Fast and the Furious franchise would make a decent comparison in quality, and the sad thing is it doesn’t even rise up over Tokyo Drift (C-) badness which was the nail in the coffin for most of its diehard fans until director Justin Lin turned in Fast & Furious (C+) and wowed the masses back into theaters. The difference between the Fast and the Furious installments and Need for Speed is that the former was wall-to-wall action whereas this spends so much time trying to cover a story that it’s just downright depressing that they think that could’ve worked. A movie like Need for Speed doesn’t even need a solid story as long as the action and set pieces work on a certain level and this movie fails at all the parts. It’s not just that the story here sucks; it’s that the action and set pieces also suck which sinks everything. Not only that but the trailer starts with Paul’s character being released from prison as a bad boy, which you think is the story’s setup, but if you watch the movie you’ll find out that it takes 45 minutes to reach that point. You see, he’s an average auto-mechanic who likes to race cars, and after a bad accident involving a friend, he ends up in prison and then gets released back to society, and then continues this streak while the police try and stop him. The story involves Paul’s character as a mechanic and his other auto-mechanic friends and their desire to race cars without being caught.

The Fast and the Furious movies aren’t good movies if you ask me but they are at least relatively watchable because of the frenetic direction and the high-octane feeling behind many of the action scenes, even though the screenplay each time out was extremely cheesy and eye-rolling-inducing. Those movies aren’t designed to please intellectual audiences but there is at least some sense of fun behind the vision. Need for Speed, on the other hand, is so boring as both a movie and in its action pieces and there’s no fun, and the director opts for the most unoriginal perspectives when showing these people racing. It’s not just that the setups are as conventional as it gets; the vision behind them does not draw you into it. Action movies are supposed to provide thrills and awe-inducing elements, and while Need for Speed may be loud at times, that’s all you notice about it because the sound is shaking. Street racing doesn’t even cover the majority of the movie, but when it is the center, there’s no excitement. The screenplay the whole way through is terrible, but so is the direction which sucks.

The movie is also two hours and ten minutes long, which is horrendous considering the bare bones here. I was willing to write this movie off as just a terribly average movie (C-/C) if it had clocked in at just an hour and a half, but it goes on for so much longer than it should that it’s angering to endure. You know the end result because of what has happened so far, so what’s the point of waiting to the end? Aaron Paul may be a familiar face if you watch a little television but the script doesn’t allow him to shine and keep your interest, and all the other roles involved are garbage, so the running time is grueling. Vin Diesel and the late Paul Walker may have had mediocre roles in the Furious movies but they were at least more compelling than this and Diesel especially knew how to command the screen with power.

Aaron Paul may have been a fantastic actor on Breaking Bad but the material here makes him look bad. I only saw this movie because of his presence, and quickly into this experience I could already tell that it was the paycheck that got him here and not because the story had lured him in. Breaking Bad required vast depth and even though I have no factual evidence, I’m guessing he was paid scale for that project rather than millions because it was a huge passion project. Scale means being paid a fraction of a normal movie star salary because of a limited budget involved. I don’t think he cashed in that great with Breaking Bad so the idea of cashing in with this sounded good to him. Paycheck decisions are usually obvious right from the get-go and that’s all I saw through Need for Speed. This is one of the worst movies of the year so far, and the sad part is, it had the potential to be just okay because of Paul.

Lee's Grade: D+
Ranked #102 of 111 between Into the Storm (#101) and Tammy (#103) for 2014 movies.

A	0.4%
B	30.0%
C	61.7%
D	8.0%
F	0.0%