Gone in 60 Seconds (1974) (2024)

Popular reviews

• Review by nathaxnne [hiatus] ★★★★★ 8

  A Burial Ritual for Amerikkkan Muscle Kar Kultur.

  The American Century ended prematurely, in 1973. Overextended imperially in Southeast Asia, in the midst of an extended stock market crash lasting until 1974, having left the Gold Standard backing the solidity of the US dollar with a fixed exchange rate in gold in favor of fiat currency, with the President under investigation for interfering in the 1972 Election he won in a landslide through the furtherance of a counter-revolutionary platform, the United States felt itself crumbling internally and abroad. In October 1973, an Oil Embargo by Arab OPEC nations caused oil prices to quadruple by its end in March 1974. The United States could not produce enough gasoline by itself to…

• Review by sophie b ★★★★

  A couple weeks ago, a friend asked me which Mad Max movie was my favorite. I said the first one. When he asked why, I replied, "because the blue van that gets destroyed in the first 5 minutes belonged to [director] George Miller."

  A filmmaker giving up their own vehicle to be destroyed, as H.B. Halicki does with most of the vehicles seen in the film, shows a real dedication to what he's doing. He didn't have a script or filmmaking know-how or acting expertise, but he did have a love of cars which he expressed by destroying several of them. There's a sincerity found in this gonzo 40 minute chase that is so often missing in megabudget CGI stuntfests…

• Review by Matt Singer ★★★ 2

  As good as the car chase is in the second half of the movie — and it’s absolutely awesome — that’s how bad pretty much everything else in the first half is. Not sure why they replaced all the music in the original cut (rights issues, maybe?) but man that is some of the worst stock junk I’ve ever heard.

• Review by Blair Russell ★★★ 2

  The movie featured plenty of CARnage.

  Would people believe it was only last night that I finally saw the original Gone in 60 Seconds? Even more shocking is that the remake has never been tackled by me either. For years there's been the idea that one day I'd give the independent hit a shot; inspiration finally came Wednesday night. Someone did a 4K upscale to the movie & uploaded it to YouTube; it did sure look purdy. Note that it's the 2000 restored version where because of the infamous “rights issues” the soundtrack was changed. As I imagine it's otherwise the best version available anywhere...

  For the first 55 or so minutes, the movie's status as an independent product was a…

• Review by Peter Labuza ★★★★ 2

  Thom Andersen wasn't joking when he referred to this film as "Dziga Vertov's Dream." The only cast member noted in the opening credits is Eleanor, the 1973 Ford Mustang that gets more screen time and characterization than any of the human characters. The plot is paper thin, often explained in ADR—we rarely even hear the characters speak from their mouths as much as see images of their hands and bodies working on the cars themselves. And until the big chase sequence, the film is entirely without narrative or much conflict, instead enacting little punchlines as they steal these cars. In many ways, this is a sociological time capsule for Los Angeles in the way The Taking of Pelham 1 2…

• Review by Andy Summers 🤠 ★★★

  It's like a longer version of The Beastie Boys "Sabotage" video.

• Review by David W ★★

  Car porn, plain and simple. Loving, lingering close ups of car fragments, being violated in various ways, all taking place against the backdrop of an auto body shop wall layered with human female pornography—this is what serves as our extended introduction to the film’s central character, Maindrian Pace (H. B. Halicki), and his line of work. Maindrian Pace, you see, is an insurance investigator by day…but a professional car thief and car pimp by night (figuratively speaking). The film luxuriates in providing us with the procedural details of his crew’s latest job: steal, slightly repurpose, and deliver 48 specific vehicle types to a South American drug lord for a whopping sum of cash. We see cars, all outfitted with female…

• Review by Tanner ★★★ 1

  It's tough to find a film that lives up so precisely to what you expect going in. The only thing I knew going in was there was an incredible 40-minute car chase and everything outside of that was entirely forgettable. That's just what you get and it's rather incredible how drastically the energy changes the moment the chase finally mercifully begins.

  To break it down into pure numbers. The runtime is 105 minutes. You have 60 minutes of largely pointless scenes involving a crew stealing dozens of cars. Then 40 minutes of the most intense, gripping, and obviously very dangerous stunt driving. And finally 5 minutes for the credits to roll. So there's a little over 60% of this film…

• Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★★

  I had forgotten how long it takes for the big chase to starts, but the early stuff is full of its own pleasures and after it starts it is just this incredible dance between cars and locations. Eleanor is among the more memorable non-human film leads. Hallicki is a great materialist even beyond his dedication to accurate geography.

• Review by AD917 ★★★½ 6

  To watch the first half of this movie is to experience one long, uninterrupted feeling of "what the fuck is happening?" There were a bunch of people stealing cars. Some talk of contracts. Many shots of people cruising around set to music. An extended montage of one guy walking past an endless row of fancy cars as a woman (his wife, maybe?) just sits in a chair and looks forlorn. One nighttime sequence where I honestly couldn't see a damn thing that was happening. At one point a tiger jumped out of a car and chased a guy for some damn reason. I'll say this much: what it lacks in narrative sophistication, it generally makes up for in a feeling…

• Review by laird

  H.B. "Toby" Halicki was like a blue collar Michael Mann, obsessed with detail, procedure, labor, economics, and rebels. GONE IN 60 SECONDS is not as entertaining as his follow up, JUNKMAN, but it does contain what may be the greatest car chase in film history, spanning nearly half of the films running length and adhering to a geographic reality in the Los Angeles shooting locations that earned this movie a position of honor in Thom Anderson's LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF. Halicki was no SoCal realist, though, he was just an amateur who loved cars and, due to ignorance of filmmaking craft or frustration with existing examples, wanted to present a car chase with as little illusion as possible. He died…

• Review by Sally Jane Black 1

  What I think needs to be praised most here is the fact that the victims - not the rich owners of the fancy cars, but the people whose lives are so often relegated to collateral damage in action movies - get little moments that humanize them. Either by cutting to them in their vehicles before they become part of the automotive carnage or by showing them in pain or distress in the aftermath, we get more insight into the impact of the epic car chase shown in this film than in most mainstream action films from the last 50 years combined. I have to wonder if this sympathy for the innocent bystanders was a reflection of Halicki's independent approach to…