Need for Speed Review: Insert Breaking Bad Pun Here.

This is one of Aaron Paul’s first ventures out of the meth lab and into the real world, thankfully instead of a depressing work filled world he has found one inhabited by fast cars and amazing races; and we’re along for the ride.

The story for Need for Speed is a very basic one: Drive across the country to take part in a race to settle a heated rivalry. In normal circumstances this would be a boring worn out concept but Need for Speed executes this idea with so much fun, charm, and sometimes a bit of cheese, it is hard not to give into the world, sit back and just enjoy the spectacle of expensive cars before you.

And these cars are beautiful, every one of them is a representation of loud, exotic, and very expensive fun; throughout mocking you to wish and dream to one day sit in that uncomfortable looking seat and masterfully drift around a race track, ingraining rubber to road and dreams to reality. The stand out car though was definitely (Aaron Paul’s) Toby’s Ford Mustang that arguably was the real star of the movie. Getting the most screen time and creating some really enthralling set pieces that really do get you on the edge of your seat and for the first time ever in a movie I cared if the car survived the encounter as much as I am caring and hoping for the characters to immerge unscathed too.

But for a movie that is supposedly just a cheesy car action movie there are a lot a lot of hair raising moments with some of the crashes feeling surprisingly brutal; making the audience really empathise with every injury and broken bone the driver is being awarded. This is even further realised by how real the driving feels as I believed it was Aaron Paul driving throughout and not just a professional driver with an Aaron Paul-ish wig on.

This coupled with the fact that the characters are funny, entertaining and basically cool makes some set pieces leave you with your fingers crossed hoping your favourite character hasn’t just drifted their last corner. This immersive attribute the film pulls off is in a big way thanks to the great acting on show, with all parties’ involved putting personality and effort into a script that in any other hands could have produced an awkward mess of a film; such as Michael Keaton’s very entertaining commentary throughout the film. Also bringing an achievement to the movie is Toby’s group/side characters that could have been a very annoying aspect of the movie but instead brought different flavours of personality to compliment Aaron Paul’s stoic character coming together to make a likeable and entertaining group of rouge racers.

Thankfully this actually quite intense atmosphere is lightened by genuinely funny moments throughout the movie, with only a few spoken jokes missing their mark, giving your heart a break before it is once again jumping out of your chest in the next hot pursuit. This all adds up to a well paced movie that can easily balance the quieter moments with the loud exhaust revving race sequences of awesome, never letting the audience mind bore and always keeping them engaged in this smooth drive of a movie.

But amongst all the laughs and high speed races there are actually many moments of surprisingly good camera work; giving the audience great shots of the destruction left in the wake of an amazing drift or nail bitingly close race and not just recycling the same camera angle every set piece keeping up a fast pace of variation and interest. Also a very over used trait for racing movies is the cockpit view used in the movie within the intense races. Need for Speed gave a different approach to what I have seen many times in the Fast and Furious movies, even appealing to my inner gamer, having short sections of an almost first person view that is very reminiscent to the games this movie is loosely based off.

Overall as long as you know what you’re going in for, a surface level fun and entertaining movie, and just sit back and let yourself fall into it you will completely enjoy this real heart racing thrill of a movie.

Need for Speed = 8/10

Visit http://www.toolazytolisten.com/ to also see my work and other cool articles.
And now you can see my articles on http://www.wildcube.co.uk/web/ along with a cool Internet radio station, playing music from the 80's to today.