Need For Speed

There seems to be a lot of hate for this movie. Based on the impossibly popular racing game franchise Need for Speed, this movie raised some impossibly high hopes. But not all the games in the series were brilliant. SO maybe the movie took some cues from those, perhaps?
The plot: Right off the bat you have three guys, Tobey Marshall (Aaron Paul), his pal/bro Pete (Harrison Gilbertson) and rich and thus bad Dino Brewster (Dominic Cooper). They race, bad guy sees he's losing so he rams Pete who goes flying, hits a pole, and bursts into inglorious flames and…The End. Or rather the beginning for a revenge plot race movie.
What follows are some criminal charges against our hero, some righteous angst and a plot for revenge. Part of said revenge involves a long, long 45-hour race because this is, after all, a racing movie. Did I oversimplify it? First of all, this movie lacks character depth. No one has personality, so you can't attach your emotive response to them. There's character variety though. You have Americans, Brits, an Arab, Hispanic guy, black guy and a dead guy. And cars galore. There's a whole lot of stunts, some quite new and unique, but mostly tried and slightly tired.

So why watch it?
Why do we watch car movies? Because race. Because crash. And the occasional hot lead female (Imogen Poots) also sweetens the deal. There are lot of things going on in this movie but not much of a plot. All of us car lovers will see it because of all the races, even though this is an hour long commercial for the latest Ford Mustang.
The movie require s a lot of suspension of disbelief. You'll see a jump where logic tells you the car won't survive but it miraculously does. Benny (Scott Mescudi), keeps on hijacking one plane or the other to help his friend. This can't happen in real life. But it does so well in the movie.
There are moments in the movie when it's just not cool. Driving against the traffic endangering lives of people and a busload of school children; it's frowned upon these days. But then you realize you're just watching a movie. It's not sophisticated, but as long as you know the difference between reality and entertainment, it can be fun.