Short review: this doesn’t work.

Need for Speed stars Aaron Paul, Dominic Cooper, Imogen Poots and Michael Keaton and is about a mechanic/racer named Tobey (played by Paul) who, upon release from jail for a crime he didn’t commit, enters a cross-country race in order to get revenge on the guy that put him away. Things are complicated.

To start, the film can’t decide its tone: comedy? Thriller? Definitely an actioner. Second the cinematography was weird. I get the use of GoPro in some racing sequences but some of the other stuff was strange. The character stuff was odd. Poots’ character was odd. Her character seemed to change with the scenes to be what was needed in the moment regardless of consistency.

The set up was far too long. The action scenes were pretty cool and many of the supporting players, Tobey’s crew, are fun and funny.

You can see how this could have been a great race film but somehow it doesn’t work, the parts don’t fit together. It’s entertaining enough but it doesn’t quite work.

Entertaining but doesn’t work.

-all photos via IMDb.com.