The Need For Speed (2014) movie is out on DVD/Blu-ray this week starring Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad) as Tobey Marshall a street racing expert facing off against his ruthless nemesis Dominic Cooper (Dino Brewster). Other notable performances in the movie are Michael Keaton who plays Monarch – sort of an underground vlogger/podcaster who specializes in calling the shots of illegal races and Imogen Poots the love interest along for the ride.
Overall Need For Speed is a fun action-racing movie that will cater to crowds who attend car shows, read magazines about cars or just have a genuine interest in sleek and fancy race cars not often seen on screen. For Aaron Paul the movie doesn’t lend much to stretch his acting chops since he spends most of the time behind the wheel of a car but he is believable as a calm and cool race car driver.
Need For Speed is very stylized and polished visually with some moments completely over the top like refueling a car at high speeds and carrying a car over a canyon by an Army chopper. Much of the movie was shot with practical effects which really shine as you can see splashes of paint practically coming off the side of a car when it smashes into another car. The most memorable part of the movie is the high-speed chase at the end of the film in which multiple race cars are involved with a handful of police cars – harkening the fun of playing one of the more popular Need For Speed games ‘Hot Pursuit‘.
The Need For Speed bonus features are loaded with juicy tidbits of information starting off with a commentary by director Scott Waugh and lead Aaron Paul. There’s also a ‘making of’ featurette which goes into great detail of showing how the production team had to build new rigs around performance cars in order to shoot at high speeds. One of the more charming behind the scenes docs shows how the director’s family was involved in making the Need For Speed film and looks at how they made one of the bigger stunts in the movie – jumping over multiple cars at high speed.