In 1994, racing game The Need for Speed was released on the 3DO console (remember that?). 20 years and 19 additional games later, this film adaptation starring Aaron Paul as Tobey Marshall roars onto the screen. A mechanic from Mount Kisco, New York, Tobey is a gifted driver who takes on Dino Brewster (Cooper), a wealthy car upgrades entrepreneur, in an illegal street race. Dino sets Tobey up for a crime he didn’t commit, and two years later, Tobey leaves prison to settle the score. Alongside specialty car dealer Julia Maddon (Poots), Tobey drives cross-country from New York to California for a showdown with Dino, organised by underground racing host Monarch (Keaton). Backing Tobey up are his long-time friends, including mechanics Finn (Malek), Joe (Rodríguez) and eye-in-the-sky pilot Benny (Mescudi).
Video game adaptations are always something of a gamble and this film does what it says on the tin: depict really cool cars going really fast. The plot is formulaic and predictable and there are as many moments of melodrama as there are of awkward comedy. We also get several cringe-worthy lines of dialogue and at 130 minutes, this is a touch too long. However, the film is shot beautifully and cinematographer Shane Hurlbut treats us to some pretty breathtaking vistas of canyons, salt flats and coastal highways as our characters traverse the United States. The cars also have heads-up displays (HUDs) at the bottom of the windshields emulating the game and the motion graphics do feel like a menu screen.
What counts here are the racing sequences, and those are pulled off pretty darn well. What’s very welcome about these scenes is that they do feel like real cars driving along real roads, there isn’t any distracting digital fakery and the actors don’t look like they were all filmed against green screens. The stunts aren’t really anything an action movie junkie wouldn’t have seen multiple times before but the special effects crew and the army of stunt drivers deserve credit all the same. Something that seems a little off are the cutaways to what seem like GoPro camera shots mounted on the cars for “crash point of view” moments, not unlike those quick POV shots in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug during the “dwarves in a barrel” scene. While some might find it adds authenticity to the moment of impact, others will find the sudden change in image quality jarring.