There’s something admirable about a film that manages to entertain despite not making any sense at all.  As you sit through films like Gone in 60 Seconds, your brain practically screams, “Get up and leave before you rot me away!” but the message never quite makes it down to your feet.  Somewhere in between your head and toes, something happens that makes you sit there with a dopey grin on your face for two hours before getting up and admitting “Geez, that was pretty good.”  Personally, I blame the sneaky epiglottis for intercepting the brain’s warning message, but I have no concrete proof of this.

Seconds is about a retired car thief named Randall "Memphis" Raines (Nicolas Cage, Bringing Out the Dead) who is temporarily drafted back into a life of crime when his younger brother Kip (Giovanni Ribisi, Boiler Room) ends up in hot water with a local bad ass with an English accent and a fetish for handcrafted wooden furniture.  The Brit is Raymond Calitri (Christopher Eccleston, eXistenZ), and he turns down Memphis’ offer of $10,000 for Kip, instead making the older Raines brother agree to boost fifty specific automobiles in four days to prevent him from becoming an only child.

It doesn’t take long to set up the film’s premise (about fifteen minutes), and I settled back in my seat under the assumption that I was in for a good hour-and-a-half of car boosting and the hilarious hijinks attendant thereto.  But Seconds doesn’t go down like that.  While the bottom of the screen reminds viewers that there are only seventy-two hours remaining in Memphis’ deadline, he has a touchy-feely breakfast with Kip.  Wait a second.  Kip?  Why the heck would Calitri let Kip go?  Couldn’t he just skip town with Memphis and his $10,000 and leave Calitri and the car-jacking business behind them?

Memphis blows the next few days visiting his mom (Grace Zabriskie, Twin Peaks) and trying to put together a team of top-notch car thieves.  He starts with the man that taught him everything he knows: former chop-shop owner Otto Halliwell (Robert Duvall, A Civil Action).  Together, Memphis and Otto complete the rest of their lawbreaking lineup.  The ranks include a mechanic/bartender named Sara "Sway" Wayland (Angelina Jolie, Girl, Interrupted), a mute morgue attendant called “The Sphinx” (Vinnie Jones, Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels), and a driving instructor named Donny Astricky (Chi McBride, Mercury Rising).  Memphis also reluctantly agrees to let Kip’s gang assist in the heist.  The Gen-Y brigands include Scott Caan  (Ready to Rumble), James Duval (Go), T.J. Cross and William Lee Scott (Black & White).

Memphis and his criminal comrades plan to steal all fifty cars in one twelve-hour period.  And not just any twelve-hour period, but, of course, the twelve-hour period immediately before the deadline (I shouldn’t complain – I waited until the morning of my 12th grade English class to write my final thesis, even though I had months to complete the project).  To make matters worse, Memphis and crew are being pursued by two cops (Delroy Lindo, Romeo Must Die, and Timothy Olyphant, Go), as well as a rival gang of car thieves that actually complained that Memphis stole the fifty-car job out from under them.  <Scratch head.>  Okay, let me get this straight:  They’re willing to do Calitri’s heist, but he insists on using a rusty ex-thief and his band of miscreants instead?

You know that the heist is going to go down to the wire, which begs the question “Why didn’t they start earlier?”  There’s the mandatory chase through the L.A. River Aqueduct (which, at this point, is used only for filming Hollywood chase scenes), and the big shoot-‘em-up action finale is so ridiculously unbelievable that I couldn’t help laughing out loud. And don’t get up and leave when the big chase scene is over, because you’ll miss Jones’ hysterical, out-of-the-blue line, which is probably the best since Alyson Hannigan’s “One time, in band camp…” confession in American Pie.

There are so many things in Seconds that just don’t make sense, and I’m not sure I even have the space to list all of them here.  Like when the bandits break into a warehouse full of about fifty rare, expensive cars, and the five that they need to boost are all lined up behind one another for easy removal.  And how do you explain that each thief gets back out on the streets after they drop off the car they’ve just stolen?  Seconds isn’t even sure what city it’s supposed to take place in, mentioning Long Beach several times, but filming multiple scenes in San Francisco in addition to the Los Angeles suburb.

Seconds is also full of all of the spastic editing, plot-holes and lack of female characters that you come to expect from a Jerry Bruckheimer (Armageddon) produced summer blockbuster.  In addition to inciting the audience to root against the police and for the criminals, Seconds also features a couple of pretty bad racial stereotypes (black people can’t swim and Asian women can’t drive).

Seconds was directed by Dominic Sena (Kalifornia) and written by Scott Rosenberg (ConAir), who adapted the script from a little-seen 1974 H.B. Halicki film of the same name (it spawned a sequel called The Junkman eight years later).  Despite its many flaws, Seconds is still worth the price of admission just for the unique and diverse casting, which includes big-name stars, regulars in independent cinema, a British soccer star and – get this – three Oscar winners (Cage, Jolie and Duvall).

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