As much as I like big epic pictures - I'll spare you the namedropping - it's great to kick back with a few beers and a simple action flick sometimes. Films where the plot takes a backseat to the set-pieces. Films where the dialogue isn't so cleverly written that it ties itself in endless knots of purple prose. There are HUNDREDS of films that fit the bill... but in my opinion Gone In Sixty Seconds is one of the better ones.
It's an update of the movie that shares its name. It also shares that picture's ethos, but not quite it's execution. Whatever was great about the original has been streamlined. Whatever was streamlined was also amped up thanks to a bigger budget. Often these kinds of endeavours are recipes for complete disaster - see the pug-ugly remake of The Italian Job for one that blew it - but here, thanks to a cast of mostly excellent actors, Sixty succeeds.
The plot and much of the dialogue isn't much to write IMDb about. Often you'll have scenes where the same line of dialogue goes back and forth between the actors, each of whom will voice it with different inflections. A lot of people found this annoying; I find it raises a smile. Each actor gets a chance to show off his or her definition of style here, with Cage, Jolie and Duvall leading the pack of course (and it should be noted that it's also amusing to see Mrs Pitt not given first billing here). The chemistry between good ol' Saint Nick the stalwart (see date of review) and Angelina leads to a couple of nice moments.
The villain is not even a little scary - I've seen Chris Eccleston play tough-guy roles before so I know he can handle them, but I think he was deliberately directed to make his role inconsequential as not to distract from the action. We know the heroes are going to succeed, somehow; we're just sitting in the car with them, enjoying the ride. I think a lot of these scenes were played with tongue so far in-cheek that it went over the heads of a lot of people giving this a poor rating. In fact, I wouldn't have minded some fourth-wall breaking winks at the camera: it's just that kind of movie.
All this style and not so much substance - something that often exhausts my patience if not executed *just* so - would be worthless if the action wasn't there. And for the most part, it is. Wonderfully so. I've noticed that it seems to be a common trend to be using fast-cut extreme close-up shots to direct action these days. I personally find this kind of thing exhausting. I prefer movies like this where the stunts are impressive enough to not need artificial tension ramping by raping tight shots all the time. I've been told that Cage actually did as many of the car stunts as he could get away with without losing his insurance (in real life I mean - his character clearly doesn't care) and it shows. The man can really move a vehicle and this is put to good use in the slow-burning climatic finale where he drives a Mustang into the ground in the most outlandish - and FUN - way possible.
So yes, this movie isn't an "epic, life-affirming post-9/11 picture with obligatory social commentary" effort. The pacing is uneven, some of the scenes could have been cut and not all the actors tow the line. But car movies rarely come better than this. So if you hate cars... why are you even reading these comments?!
I'd take it over the numerous iterations of "The Flaccid And The Tedious" (guess the franchise) any day. 7/10

INSPECTOR GADGET (1999) **
Starring: Matthew Broderick, Rupert Everett, Joely Fisher, Andy Dick, Dabney Coleman Director: David Kellogg 80 minutes Rated PG
By Blake French:
Disney's new film, "Inspector Gadget" is about a cop named John who survives a major accident and is saved by a state of the art experimental operation that turns him into a robotic machine-like agent who has tools and contraptions of all sorts built into his body at his use when he says "Go Go," only to be called Inspector Gadget!
The actual movie's structure is much like the body formation of Inspector Gadget himself. It is noisy, fragmented, energetic and consist of a bunch of half hearted contraptions thrown together to make something that doesn't have much in common with anything else present. The film is basically a series of zany action sequences that are kind of pasted together with characters and an uneven story that only kids between the ages of 6-9 would enjoy.
The cop who is dramatically reinvented is played by Matthew Broderick, who, until "Inspector Gadget," was on a success spree with movies like "Election." His character becomes Inspector Gadget after an encounter with the film's heavy handed villain named Claw. He is played by Rupert Everett, who has already experienced catastrophe this year with the dreadful "William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Nights Dream."
There is a romantic subplot in this movie as well as ample amounts of scenes involving Inspector Gadget's wacky body parts and mechanism elements. It has Gadget and Claw drooling over the attractive character Brenda, played by Joely Fisher, for both her looks and her knowledge of a specific invention made by her late father, who was earlier killed by Claw. Competition evolves into fight scenes and a reason for many happenings in the film. Also a major character is the Gadget Mobil, a life like automobile that is devised for Inspector Gadget himself. It is voiced by D.L. Hughly from the sitcom comedy "The Hughly's."
"Inspector Gadget" is a movie that I found quite bad. I know, I am not exactly a target audience of the filmmakers, but even my ten year old relative found the film to his disliking. The movie is full of distinct flaws and obvious problems. I never found myself caring about the characters. There is no mood development beyond some neat opening credits, unlike the much worse 1997 film, "Mr. Magoo," which opened using clips of the original cartoon. Is it too much to ask for that same type of thing in this comedy-which is seldom funny and hardly ever convincing. The overall production design is nothing but a mess of incomplete sight gags and consists of one joke: Inspector Gadget's bumbling goofiness.
In movies like this the audience lusts for boundaries-something to help make out what can happen and what can not. In "Inspector Gadget" there are no such boundaries. This is truthfully nothing more than a party time for the actors, who surly had lots of fun. I am reminded of another lacking comedy released a few years ago called "Blankman" which again, contained lots of props and energy, and the actors certainly had fun time with all the gizmos and props, but it too lacked something needed for every movie: audience participation.
A character that I found being left out a lot is Gadgets daughter, who by the end of the movie, I still has not clue of what her name was. She is used only as a plot device-and I question how she was used to further the plot as well. For her presence brings nothing relevant or productive to the film. We never know her reactions to her father's operation or accidents. Thus, this is someone who could have been completely left out and would have not affected the movie a bit.
In closing, I'd like to state that "Inspector Gadget" is an awful, insufficient excuse for a children's comedy. And believe it or not, I find myself comparing this film to last years violent and very anti-young audience action picture "Blade." I am stating once again that I had much rather have a movie where nothing happens than one in which everything happens. "Inspector Gadget" had so much going for it at the same time, it made literally made me dizzy.