I thought I'd do both movies on this review... seemed like it might make for an interesting comparison of the two.

The original... frantic car chases and reckless abandon are peppered throughout this movie. The plot and characters are about as paper thin as you can get... what do you expect from a mid '70's B movie? But the stunt driving, and choreography of the chase scenes rival... and in many ways, surpass what we get today. The writer, director, and star of this movie is H.B. Halicki, who plays Mandarian Pace... by day, a mild mannered auto insurance claims adjuster... but by night he is Super Car Thief!

In the movie's climactic car chase involving a '73 Mustang Mach 1, we're treated to over 40 minutes of car chase goodness. Spanning... and wrecking five cities, and over 93 cars... just in this one segment. What's truly amazing about this however, isn't the length of time, or the amount of cars destroyed... what's most amazing is that the '73 Mach 1... only one was used. Through running into other cars, clipping an 18 wheeler and spinning a 180 into a light pole (which you find out was NOT planned), running through sand and jumping embankments, and the final jump that signals the end of the chase... it was the only car used. No clones here. To see the amount of damage this car sustains, and keep running, is in itself amazing. And the fact that H.B. Halicki did all his own stunt driving... that deserves it's own share of respect.

The remake... a frantic car chase to highlight the films climax. This film took the basic formula of the original... steal a bunch of cars, and even took a few elements from the original (other than the name, of course)... such as the star vehicle's name, Eleanor. Only in this movie, it wasn't a '73 Mach 1... but instead, a '67 Shelby GT 500. *drool* Oh, sorry. This movie is everything a summer blockbuster should be... fast action, a halfway believable cast, and LOTS of things blowing up. Where it fails to shine is ... oddly enough ... in the main plot line of the story... to steal a lot of cars.

Where the original put very little emphasis on the other cars, and focused most of it's efforts on the Eleanor chase... this movie tried to give all the other cars their fair share of screen time. Which, in itself would have been fine... but we've all seen a Hummer being indestructible, we've all seen Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and Porches being driven fast (except only the Porche is seen driving fast in this movie???)... what we haven't seen too often is the Jaguar XJ220... which has about 2 seconds of screen time... or the Vector M12... which also only sees about 2 seconds of screen time. The old Hemi Cuda gets quite a bit of screen time... on the interior, but is almost nonexistent in external shots. Of course, Eleanor gets the majority of the screen time... and while the chase itself is rather entertaining, it is disappointingly ended with a horrendously fake jump. I could buy seeing the beginning, and the ending of the jump... WHY they felt the necessity to add an overhead tracking shot of an obviously CGI vehicle, is beyond me. It killed the jump scene. In fact, of all the people who've seen this movie... most enjoyed the movie as a whole, but couldn't stand the jump. Go figure.

So now that we've got a base for the two movies, let's take a look at some similarities and differences between the two.

The basic principle is the same for both movies... steal a bunch of cars. In both movies they assign code names to each car, and the names happen to be female names. The star vehicle for both movies is named Eleanor. That's about it for the similarities.

The differences, on the otherhand, far outnumber the similarities. For instance, in the original, the objective is to steal 48 cars, while in the remake is 50 cars (yes, I'm getting nit picky here). The star vehicle... while sharing the same name, did not share the same skin... classic muscle car enthusiasts, and classic Mustang enthusiasts especially, certainly know there is a world of difference between a '67 Shelby GT 500, and a '73 Mach 1.

In the original, the main character, Mandarian Pace, is an auto insurance adjuster, who steals cars on the side, swaps VIN's and other identifiable characteristics, and then turns around and sells them... making a nice profit. He is propositioned to steal 48 cars in one week, and deliver them to the shipping yard to be exported to other countries... he runs into trouble though, when his brother gets jealous, and upset about having to cut his honeymoon short to help fulfill this contract... to which his brother places an anonymous call to the cops... and you can guess the rest from here.

In the new movie, the main character, Randal Rains, is a retired car thief who is dragged back into this world because after leaving six years prior, his little brother has stepped up to take his place. However, his little brother gets into a bit of trouble when he promises to deliver 50 cars by a certain date, and ends up losing all the cars due to a police bust, after he's caught street racing in one of the stolen vehicles (the aforementioned Porche)... he unwittingly leads the cops right to the warehouse where all the other cars are being kept. Randal must step in, and take the contract to deliver 50 cars, or his little brother dies.

The ending chase in the remake, while nice and fast paced, and filled with lots of tense action... just doesn't seem to live up to the original. Probably because most of it wasn't real. A lot of CGI help was there to assist in the production of the final chase. Time... WAY different... in the original, the chase is just a hair over 40 minutes... in the remake... just barely 12 minutes. Also, where the original made it a point to run into other cars and create obstacles using any means necessary, the remake took the safe (re: cheap) way out, and only a scarce 10 - 20 cars where actually damaged. While most of the action was in tight quarters, there just so happened to be just enough room to squeeze through unscathed in most situations. The only real obstacle appeared to be a wreck on the bridge... which was cleared with the assistance of a well placed flatbed truck, creating a ramp for which Randal could make his daring escape. However, in the original, there were obstacles everywhere... a park, people, side walks, an old lady with an umbrella, a moving truck (as in moving company, not as in motion), other cars, model airplanes, sand dunes, fire, a car dealership... and the list goes on.

The original's chase just felt more exciting. Where the rest of the movie fails... it shines in the chase, and that's why this movie deserves a 4. If it weren't for the final chase being as extraordinary as it was, this movie would be a 3 at best. On the flip side, where the remake shines in just about all the other categories... it just fails to deliver in the chase. Specifically, the end of the chase. It was just a total let down... and that kept the remake from receiving a 4.5.

I do own both movies, and would recommend both to anyone who is a fan of cars to check these movies out. You won't be disappointed. In fact, I picked up the original after it was re-released on DVD, right around the same time that the remake was released to DVD... I brought it home and put it in... just hoping that I didn't just waste $20, because I was watching it for the first time. I'm happy to say, it definitely wasn't a waste of money.