Film
Bristol Bad Film Club: Uncaged – A Stand-In Story + Q&A + Gone in 60 Seconds
- Director
- Blake Johnston, Kelso Steinhoff, Dominic Sena
- Certificate
- 15
- Running Time
- 121 mins
Meet Marco Kyris. You may not recognise him, but you’ve probably seen a lot of him: a hand here, a back of the head there, and so on. Kyris was Nicolas Cage‘s stand-in for 10 years – that’s 20 movies in prolific Mr. Cage’s world, including (deep breath) Trapped In Paradise, Kiss of Death, Leaving Las Vegas, The Rock, Face/Off, Con Air, City of Angels, Snake Eyes, 8MM, Gone In 60 Seconds, The Family Man, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Windtalkers, Adaptation, Matchstick Men, National Treasure, Lord of War and The Weather Man. They only parted company when Cage ran out of cash and had to start selling off castles.
Now Kyris’s story has been told in the documentary short Uncaged. He’ll be present at this special Bristol Bad Film Club event to talk about his experiences after a screening of the film. Since Uncaged is just 11 minutes long, however, it’ll be followed by a full 20th anniversary screening of Gone in 60 Seconds. See the leg that kicks Christopher Eccleston off the warehouse walkway? That’s Kyris’s, not Cage’s.
As for Gone in 60 Seconds itself, this isn’t one of Cage’s best (though, obviously, it’s by no means his worst). In fact, it’s an oddly boring Jerry Bruckheimer production from 2000 in which that week’s sneering British panto villain, the decidedly unmenacing Christopher Eccleston, bullies ex-car thief Cage out of retirement to nick 50 vehicles in three days. To achieve his mission, Nic must assemble a crack team. So naturally he recruits an old codger (Robert Duvall), token Tinseltown totty (Angelina Jolie, doing ‘dangerous’ unconvincingly once again) and, uh, a mute Vinnie Jones. There’s plenty of hard car porn, if that’s what you’re after, but despite the simplicity of the plot we have to endure an awful lot of boring characters exchanging bad dialogue in dingy warehouses before they get around to frittering the budget on crashes and explosions. Apart from the big money shot at the end, even the chases are desperately hackneyed. All of which is rather baffling, given the decision to waste the talents of three (count ’em!) Oscar-winning actors in subsidiary roles to the promised, if sadly undelivered, vehicular mayhem.
Go here for tickets.
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