You would think a movie that has been touted as a non-stop car chase action for the last six months would deliver, wouldn’t you? But “Gone in 60 Seconds” took the one sure-fire premise in the universe and blew it.

“Gone in 60 Seconds” is a very rough remake of the 1974 chase flick of the same title. The original delivered, however, and set up the 2000 audience for a huge disappointment. In the original, there was not a lot of moralizing and rationalization of car theft. You don’t really need it. Is the assumption that if Nicolas Cage is playing a highly accomplished car thief who just does what he does because that’s what car thieves do that the audience will somehow feel guilty about the action?

Cage plays Randall “Memphis” Raines, the (retired) prince of car thieves who is pulled back into the life because his brother is a colossal screw-up who fails miserably to come through with a large order of custom wheels. So Cage has to steal 50 cars in 24 hours to save his brother. To do the job, he recruits all of his other legendary car-thief friends who have also gone straight.

All of this justification for grand-theft auto is apparently supposed to make even the most morally uptight audience relax and get into the thieving. Frankly, the kind of people who need their characters to have really good moral reasons to steal cars probably don’t get into this kind of movie anyway.

The original certainly didn’t bother to justify what was going on, the car theft WAS the excuse. It was the excuse to make a full-length motion picture that was little more than action and awesome car stunts.

Fast forward to the new millennium, and we can’t just be allowed to enjoy a couple of hours of car stealing, fast driving and adrenaline. No. We have to stop every once in awhile to remind ourselves that the only reason we are enjoying this film is because the theft is justified; it’s laughable.

Of course, Nicolas Cage is always a treat to watch on screen; he does cool so well that it is almost becoming a clich‚. At least he doesn’t mug for the camera so much as look dark and brooding for himself, but it’s time for Cage to stop making every movie that directors slap down in front of him. Try being selective, Nic. Read the scripts or get someone with taste to do it for you.

Angelina Jolie’s lips need to get an agent of their own. She is a one- trick pony whose trick is getting tiresome. OK, we get it, you’re really hot and quirky, so be it, now take a few acting lessons because beauty fades and the only hope you have of a career past 30, besides massive plastic surgery, is to be a bankable actress with a fairly low freak quotient, and even then pray to the gods of charity the industry cares enough about quality to still hire you.

Every other character is just the worst sort of pre-packaged, carbon-copy stereotype you ever saw in a bad-guys-as-good-guys, change-up action flick.

Robert Duvall as the cagey old timer and Giovanni Ribisi as the Generation-Y screw-up who starts this whole mess are little more than cookie-cutter characters, pieces of plot scenery that might be missed if they were absent, but add nothing with their presence.

The biggest complaint, though, is that for a car-chase movie, there was precious little car stealing and chasing going on. There was some, but not 50 cars worth. If your premise is that these people have to steal 50 cars, show it! Start with it five minutes into the movie and don’t stop until the credits roll. If you want to film people talking in a movie of this nature, do it while they are driving 120 mph, throw in a few cell phones and walkie talkies and keep things moving.

“Gone in 60 Seconds” takes the name of a fairly bad cult movie to begin with, but at least the cult classic was what it said: nonstop action.

What would have been interesting to see on screen would have been a sweetly updated version of what was done in the 1970s. Show the audience how you would do two hours of grand theft auto double-O style. In the 1970s, all they had was hard work and determination. There were no fancy computerized special effects; there were certainly no actresses like Angelina Jolie; all they had was Sally Field.

It was a complete waste of time and, quite frankly, wasted a decent theme. Don’t see it on a bet.

— Greg Jerrett

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Greg Jerrett is a graduate student in English from Council Bluffs. He is opinion editor of the Daily.