Need For Speed: Movie Review

We have all grown up playing the Need for Speed series of games. For most of us, it was the first time we could get behind the wheel of a Ferrari, McLaren or Porsche and race it down exotic locations at ridiculously high speeds. In fact, many people have developed a keen interest in cars through these games. Now, Need for Speed intends to thrill a whole new generation of audiences with its brand new namesake movie.

When I watched the trailers for the new Need for Speed movie a few months ago, I must admit, I was a bit unsure about what the movie intended to put forth. Millions of dollars worth of hypercars being destroyed in spectacular crash sequences can make anyone (especially a petrolhead) twitch. The final product though, is a whole different ballgame.

The movie starts off well with a pretty impressive street race that sees the protagonist, Toby Marshall, an auto shop owner in a small town in rural America take on some impressive muscle cars in his tuned Ford Gran Torino. With an impressive sequence of driving, some spectacular cars, including a 1969 Ford Mustang Fastback, a 1965 Pontiac GTO, a 1970 Ford Mustang Mach 1 and a rather misfitting 80’s Porsche 944 terrorising the streets, the opening race proves to be quite an impressive piece of cinematography.

The plot really starts to thicken when Dino Brewster, Toby Marshall’s old rival and now successful Indycar driver comes back to the small town convincing the latter to finish building a highly one-off 2013 Ford Mustang. With the garage behind on payments to the bank, Toby puts aside his ego and decides to build the fastest and frankly most impressive mustang that we have seen in a long long time. With the car finished, Marshal proves to a prospective buyer that the car will perform to standards way higher than anyone else can imagine, sending Dino Brewster into a fit of jealousy, leading to yet another street race that leads to a fatal accident and the death of Toby’s best friend, Pete and the subsequent arrest of Marshall who has been falsely accused of causing the accident.

After two years in jail, Marshall returns with vengeance on his mind and a goal to take on Dino Brewster at the world’s most exclusive street race, the ‘De Leon’. What ensues is an epic drive across the continental United States, with a fair share of police chases, rival street racers and some hilarious moments, all in all making the Need for Speed movie a great watch. At the ‘De Leon’, a race that involves the likes of a Bugati Veyron Supersport, a McLaren P1, a Lamborghini Sesto Elemento amongst others, the Car-nage and racing, equally thrilling, brings the audience to the edge of their seats. The movie ends, like almost all Hollywood movies with vengeance accomplished and the good guys coming out on top with the bad guy going to jail for his crimes.

The new Need for Speed movie is a good blend of classics like the Cannonball Run, Bullit and the original Fast and Furious with a bit of Redline thrown in the mix for good measure. With the Fast and Furious movie series stated to end after the 7^th movie which is due later this year or early 2015, the Need for Speed set of movies might very possibly take over as the favoured automotive related movie series. Personally though, I do hope the Need for Speed movies stick to cars and not skew away in the direction recent Fast and Furious movies seem to have taken. We give the movie a solid 3.5/5.