By Robert Scucci
| Published
Shortly after Breaking Bad’s legendary five-season run, Aaron Paul was available to star in 2014’s Need for Speed – a movie with a not great screenplay but some of the best stunt work a non-CGI production has to offer. While your mileage (pun intended) may vary on video game adaptations, Need for Speed doesn’t require any kind of subject matter expertise to watch because the games are about racing and running from the law, and the movie itself isn’t much of a thinker by any stretch of the imagination. Boasting you typical “race against the clock” kind of narrative, Need for Speed tears across the country with style and conviction as souped up race cars are used to tell a story about revenge and redemption while entire city blocks get wrecked from the fallout.
The Bare-Bones Plot
Need for Speed doesn’t have a whole lot to offer on the narrative front, but its bare-bones plot leaves plenty of room for drawn-out action sequences that will have you sitting at the edge of your seat.
We’re first introduced to Tobey Marshall (Aaron Paul), a mechanic and racer who’s trying to restore his late father’s garage to its former glory despite the mounting financial issues he’s facing. While Tobey does okay for himself by participating in unsanctioned street races for cash prizes, he knows he needs to score big in order to keep the doors open and the lights on, so he makes a deal with his longtime rival, Dino Brewster (Dominic Cooper), against his better judgment that involves restoring a Ford Shelby Mustang for a multi-million dollar price tag that he’ll receive a hefty payout from.
Dino, who’s exceedingly wealthy but has a vicious inferiority complex, challenges Tobey to a race when Pete (Harrison Gilbertson) mentions that Tobey is a better driver. The race has both a financial and personal stake, as Dino is dating Anita (Dakota Johnson), Tobey’s ex-girlfriend, and Pete’s older sister.
Dino knows he’s about to lose the race, and the money from the Mustang sale to Tobey, so he rams Pete’s car off the road, resulting in his death. Tobey, unable to prove that Dino was at the race, takes the fall and serves a two-year sentence for vehicular manslaughter, setting the rest of Need for Speed in motion.
Racing And Revenge
Two years later on the Need for Speed timeline, Tobey is a free man, but still wants to clear his name. Borrowing the Mustang that got him into all of this trouble in the first place, Tobey teams up with his crew, consisting of a National Guard Pilot known as “Maverick” (Scott Mescudi), a mechanic named “Beasty” (Ramon Rodriguez), and a computer expert named Finn (Rami Malek), who all have one goal in mind: getting Tobey an invitation to an exclusive underground supercar racing competition known as De Leon, which is organized by an eccentric radio host and racing enthusiast known as “Monarch” (Michael Keaton).”
Joining Tobey as his passenger is Julia (Imogen Poots), the car broker who set up the original deal between Tobey and Dino, who’s gearing up to participate in the De Leon himself.
With just 45 hours to hightail across the country to enter the race, defeat Dino, and clear his name, Tobey drives like a bat out of hell, evading authorities, wrecking cars, and failing to realize that if he just didn’t race Dino in the first place he’d be a millionaire without a dead friend plaguing his conscience, causing him to embark on a revenge arc that violates his parole and could potentially kill him.
An Unthinkably Stupid Story With The Best Action
Need for Speed would prove difficult to enjoy if you simply read the screenplay and wondered who you’re supposed to be rooting for. Tobey’s character story arc is screaming with a total lack of self-awareness that he’d need to have in order to be a likeable character, but somehow Aaron Paul has enough charisma to make you want to see his adventure through. But when you consider the fallout that set off the chain of events in the first place, it’s his reckless behavior fueled by hubris that got him locked up, and I can’t say that putting him behind bars in the first act was necessarily a bad idea.
The reason that you want to watch Need for Speed, however, is the racing itself. With a production that employed practical effects in favor of CGI, you’re actually watching real kit car replicas take a beating as they get pummeled, driven off the road, and, in some cases, launched over busy stretches of highway, or towed across the Bonneville Salt Flats with a hi-jacked military helicopter.
While I can’t say for certain that you’ll enjoy Need for Speed (currently streaming on Hulu) for its profound dialogue or poignant character arcs, there’s copious amounts of high-level yet mindless action that makes this one perfect to throw on in the background while working on projects around the house and occasionally looking up to watch fast cars defy the laws of physics.
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