Need for Speed

The line between video games and films is an interesting one that has never stayed still as games become more like films. Unfortunately, almost all attempts to take a game to the silver screen have never quite found much in the way of any success and so the number of adaptations has dwindled over the years. Most recently there was the lacklustre Tomb Raider reboot, and Tom Holland has already been miscast in the Uncharted film set for 2022 that I'm setting my expectations to 'low' having enjoyed the excellent game series. In 2014, Touchstone Pictures took the plunge and decided to adapt the Need for Speed series into a film, a property not known for its story but one that would give director Scott Waugh the chance to get creative with some fast cars. 

Aaron Paul stars as a street racer who has to take a modified Mustang across America against the clock to participate in a race to avenge the death of his friend. It's a straight-forward premise that suits the material to give the audience fast cars pushing themselves to the limit with enough of a story in the background to hold the thing together, and it just about works. 

With so many Fast & Furious films about, 2014 was the right time to give audiences more of what they seemingly wanted but I was feeling the fatigue of that series. Some of those films had their moments but even the stronger flicks didn't really rank among any I'd want to revisit. Need for Speed on the other hand takes a more grounded approach to its cars by kicking-off with a great opening race that was well shot and directed perfectly. The film continues this approach and it had me engaged but after I while I found this to, well, run out of gas before the finish line. 

The problems here is that the film is overly long (130 minutes), there are too many characters who don't really contribute enough to the plot and the story is just far too predictable for its running time. When Aaron Paul is racing against the villainous Dominic Cooper, Need for Speed is a lot of fun thanks to its exciting visuals but it needed a tighter script and to be no more than 90 minutes long. 

Need for Speed has its moments and I would welcome more street racing films like this as Waugh and his cast/crew do hit more targets than it misses making this certainly of the better films adapted from a video game. A sequel to this isn't looking likely but I still had a lot of fun and would recommend it to anyone interested in seeing sports cars go fast.