Grade: B-

Verdict: Loud, dumb, fast, fun.

Details: Starring Nicolas Cage and Angelina Jolie. Rated PG-13 for violence, sexuality and profanity. 1 hour, 59 minutes.

Rate it: Write your own review

Review: That burning rubber smell comes from producer Jerry Bruckheimer's latest action flick as it screeches into your local multiplex.

A high-octane remake of the 1974 flick, "Gone in 60 Seconds" is like most of Bruckheimer's brute-strength blockbusters ("Armageddon," "Con Air," "The Rock"). It's a big-muscled, tiny-brained monstrosity of shrieking engines, breaking glass, big explosions and dumb dialogue.

It's also a warm-weather guilty pleasure, packed with several sharp action scenes, and stocked with a cast of actors almost sinfully overqualified for the movie's neanderthal antics.

Nicolas Cage plays Memphis Raines - (don't you love the name?) - a reformed car thief called back to Long Beach when his no-'count kid brother Kip (Giovanni Ribisi, doing his pale runt routine) fumbles a big boost for a British crime lord (go figure) named Raymond Calitri (Christopher Eccleston).

Whew... sorry, that's a long sentence. But it's the way the movie plays: This happens, and then that, and oh wow that car just blew up, and look, here comes Angelina Jolie! But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself...

Anyway, Memphis agrees to make good on Kip's fumble. He doesn't have much choice: Otherwise Calitri plans to trash-compact his brother at his junkyard hideaway. The deal: Memphis has to heist 50 specific cars for Calitri within three days - sort of a scavenger hunt for the low-jack set.

Memphis rounds up the standard colorful crew, including Mirror Man (TJ Cross), Tumbler (Scott Caan), Donny (Chi McBride), former partner Atley (Will Patton) and the mute giant Sphinx (Brit soccer monolith Vinnie Jones of "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels"). Their base of operations: the garage of Memphis's old mentor Otto (Robert Duvall).

The showiest member of the team is Memphis's ex-gal Sway - and may I say again, don't you love these names? She's played by Jolie, who gets a knockout glamour-tough entrance - flat on her back wreching at the under-guts of a car, her porcelain face haloed by blond dredlocks.

Since the tracking and tagging of a bunch of autos isn't all that exciting, director Dominic Sena ("Kalifornia") keeps the middle section pumped by unleashing a couple of suspicious detectives on Memphis' trail: Castlebeck (the always impressive Delroy Lindo) and Drycoff (Timothy Olyphant, who has a good smirk).

There's also a gang of rival car thieves, on hand to chase Memphis and crew through back yards and shatter lots of glass with endless ammo rounds.

Did I mention that this movie required more than 80 stuntpeople?

Written by Scott Rosenberg, "Gone in 60 Seconds" isn't believable for a second, and it has plot holes you could drive all 50 cars through, side-by-side. It throws in bits of faux touch-feely drama, like Memphis and Kip's uneasy brotherly relationship. Memphis and Sway rekindle their relationship at the least likely moment. The villain is assigned his standard-issue effete tic (Calitri is a woodworking hobbyist specializing in Mission-style furniture). And the black characters (except for Lindo) are used for the kind of comic relief that uncomfortably verges on old, racist feets-don't-fail-me-now humor.

But if you sit through the usual formula garbage, "Gone" delivers a long, harrowing car chase that easily outdoes the motorcycle finale in "M:I-2." Sure, you may lose a few IQ points while you're watching the flick. But you'll be having too much fun to care.

— Steve Murray, Cox News Service