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Need For Speed | 2014 | PG-13 | - 3.6.4
Based on a hit video game, this film features 1960s and 1970s muscle car restorations alongside modern super race cars: A struggling mechanic (Aaron Paul) has just endured his father's death, and soon afterward a rich ex-NASCAR driver (Dominic Cooper) frames him for vehicular homicide. A secret auto race is set and a massive bounty is put on the mechanic's head. Also with Imogen Poots, Ramón Rodríguez and Michael Keaton. Directed by Scott Waugh. [2:10]
SEX/NUDITY 3 - A man quits his office job and disrobes on his way out of the office, left wearing socks and boxers only, and he kisses a woman coworker passionately as a "goodbye"; he removes his boxers below screen and walks into the hallway where we see him nude from the back (except for socks) and in a glass elevator with a woman he asks if she is bored at work and she says, "Yes"; she then looks down at his groin (off-screen) as he says, "It's cold in here" and we see his bare upper chest and shoulders as he walks with a friend outside and other men and women stare at him (while chasing his friend, we see his bare back, buttocks and legs).
► Many women at a drive-in theater are shown clothed in tube tops, halter-tops and tight T-shirts and shorts that reveal bare shoulders, arms, cleavage, bare midriffs and bare legs to the thigh. A few women at a party wear low-cut gowns in a blurred background shot and a little cleavage is visible while a few of the skirts are short enough to reveal some bare thighs just above the knee.
► A male prisoner teaches three other male prisoners to dance and one overweight man wearing an orange jumpsuit attempts to twerk, shaking and thrusting his backside in a side view.
► A man asks a woman to stay the night with him (they do not have a chance to do so). A woman wiggles her little finger in the air and says that an overcompensating man (implying small genitals) needs a souped-up car.
► A man kisses a woman briefly in a hospital room (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details). A man kisses a woman "hello" on one cheek.
VIOLENCE/GORE 6 - A cautionary caption appears during the end credits, advising that the audience should not attempt any of the dangerous driving tricks or speeds shown in the film.
► Three men race cars capable of 270 mph on a two-lane road with a yellow line down its center, they force other drivers off the road with loud squealing tires, they skid around corners and swerve between lanes, they avoid several head-on collisions, but one car clips a non-racing car and causes it to crash to the shoulder with shattering glass (no injuries are apparent); one car drives on the wrong side of a divided highway for a few miles before crossing over to the proper side again, one driver speeds up and purposely clips another car at the rear fender causing it to jump high into the air before crashing down and rolling several times along the long axis with smoke and fire emanating, the car bounces onto a bridge railing, cuts through decorative stonework and crashes over the side onto its roof where it lands on large rocks at the side of a river, smoldering, issuing large amounts of smoke and burning with large flames; one of the other drivers rushes to the car just as it burns more intensely and he cries and screams, although the film is silent through this scene, and the scene ends.
► At night five cars race against one another and a train through city streets beside railroad tracks and across rail crossings: four of the cars with squealing tires make it just in time across a train crossing, leaving one car behind, then weave in and out of traffic, run other drivers off the road and nearly hit a mobile home; they run over a homeless man's full shopping carts of possessions and he shakes his fist and shouts at them. A police cruiser with flashing lights chases a speeding car unsuccessfully; the car sheers a fender off another car and speeds away, spinning 360 degrees three times in a street and the driver jumps the car over a tree, into a micro-park and onto another highway; three cruisers with flashing lights stop and three cars behind them hit one another (no injuries are seen) as we hear crunching metal.
► Six expensive high-powered racecars compete on a two-lane mountain road while several police SUVs and a police helicopter attempt to catch up and stop the race, but fail; several SUVs wreck, flip and burn leaving drivers uninjured while one cop sends his empty cruiser into the path of a racecar that demolishes the cruiser and goes on, the officer piloting the helicopter radios in for police to consider using lethal force on the racecars, but all nearby police vehicles are wrecked, three racecars spin out and wreck with dented fenders, broken glass and smashed hoods (no injuries are evident) and one remaining car rear-ends another car and sends it off-road, flipping and burning in flames and smoke (we do not see the driver); another car spins out and crashes, flipping along its long axis several times, landing on its roof and erupting into flames and smoke and the lead driver in the race comes back and saves the man inside the last flipped car, but then punches him hard in his scratched face.
► A semi-truck cab with an empty trailer bed slams into a car broadside, shattering all of its windows and causing the car to be thrown into the air before spinning around and landing on its roof with flames shooting out of the carriage (a man and a woman inside have facial scratches and the broken glass fills the upside down roof); the man pulls the woman out unconscious, they get in to a friend's pickup truck, and they all go to the hospital; we see the woman later in a hospital bed with a cast and sling on her arm and we hear that it is broken (she has no equipment or tubes attached to her) and a male friend visits and becomes tearful (we see a scratch on her cheek covered by a bandage).
► A man and a woman change driver's and passenger's seats in the front of a car while driving at high speed until a large Jeep rear-ends them and a passenger in the Jeep shoots at them, shattering the rear window; a Hummer following closely wrecks and flips end over end, catching fire (no injuries are seen). Two Jeeps chase a car through desert dirt roads and they all reach a cliff side road without a guardrail and a woman driver gasps; an Army helicopter appears and drops two cables equipped with hooks that attach to the car and carry it over a cliff, a canyon and a river before setting it down in the Bonneville Salt Flats (the driver looks terrified).
► Two men have an unspoken long-term grudge: in one scene, one of the men slams the other man against a wall after punching him in the stomach, but lets him go; each tells the other man threateningly to be careful and watch himself.
► A graveside funeral shows women crying and men and women standing around a closed coffin briefly; the scene cuts to an arrested man wearing an orange jumpsuit being questioned by a detective about the death of another man (the man in the jumpsuit cries and he spends two years in prison).
► A man steps out in front of a fast moving race car on a test track and the driver screeches to a halt after clocking 234 mph. A man drives a car at high speeds with a passenger, he swerves, forcing other drivers off the road while squealing his tires and the passenger screams several times (wind from the passing car nearly unseats a man pedaling a bicycle). A large pickup truck with gas tanks approaches a car at high speed; a man climbs from a truck window to the roof and reaches a gasoline nozzle as a woman climbs out of the car window and puts the nozzle into the car's gas tan; re-fueling happens at about 100 miles an hour and the people are able to climb back into the vehicles. A state trooper questions a woman at a truck stop and she runs away and locks herself in an upstairs room; he pounds on the door and shouts as she climbs out a window as she says that she fears heights, then jumps into a male friend's arms and as they speed off in the car the trooper pursues in his, but the axel falls out of the back end.
► Police arrest a man for murder. A man finds a car in a warehouse and it is evidence in a vehicular manslaughter case; he and a friend take the car to use in a high-speed race. Four cruisers pull up with lights flashing, and police officers exit vehicles with handguns drawn while a man lies face down on the ground and the police arrest him for illegal racing.
► A man and a woman argue about why he thought that women know nothing about automobile engines. An Internet radio hosts asks listeners if their parents ever smacked them in the head. A man tells a woman that he is afraid of her fast driving. We hear than a man's father died in the recent past. An Internet show host announces about a Mustang, "That Ford will make your bowels loose."
► A large black dog barks and startles a man pumping gas at a truck stop.
LANGUAGE 4 - 9 scatological terms, 5 anatomical terms, 15 mild obscenities, exclamations (shut-up), name-calling (crazy, insane, stupid, maniac, ladies [said to men], Mr. Strong and Silent, redneck, liar, ex-con, trolls, tart, douche bag, Smokey, nimrod), stereotypical references to blue collar workers, corrupt businessmen, the rich, men, women, the British, police officers, prisoners, 7 religious exclamations (Oh My God, God, Jesus, Godspeed, Holy [scatological term deleted]).
SUBSTANCE USE - A man takes a pill out of an over-the-counter pill bottle and swallows it. Men hold bottles of beer in a mechanics' garage while empty beer bottles sit on a table (one man takes a sip from his beer bottle), a woman sips from a glass of wine at a restaurant table while another woman holds a glass of wine and a man drinks from a glass of whiskey, men and women drink alcoholic beverages at a new-auto reveal party while bottles of champagne and liquors sit on a table, and men and women drink mixed drinks in tall and short glasses at a bar and nearby tables.
DISCUSSION TOPICS - Friendship, trust, love, relationships, death, greed, grudges, crime, consequences, corruption in auto racing, high speed racing, revenge, justice, redemption.
MESSAGE - Justice is worth the costs of pursuing it.
CAVEATS
Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.
We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.
Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.
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