Shitty Action Film Villains Volume One: Raymond Calitri

The Nicholas Cage remake of Gone in 60 Seconds is an awful movie, a Jerry Bruckheimer production directed by one of his sub-Bay minions with all the sweaty bathos and sterile action you'd expect. The only thing memorable about the film besides Angelina Jolie's blonde dreadlocks is the noteworthy lameness of the bad guy. Christopher Eccleston plays Raymond Calitri, the murderous head of an international car theft ring. The problem isn't really Eccleston, who is can convey serious menace, as he did in 28 Days Later and Shallow Grave. The problem is the stunningly lame way that the filmmakers (to loosely apply the word) decide to define Calitri. His "hook" is that...he really likes wood. There's a jaw-dropping scene in which Eccleston gives a whole schpeil about the cleanliness and elegance of wood as a building material in between threatening to kill Cage's younger brother. It's pretty much the only bit of character development Calitri gets and it stands out for the arbitrary stupidity, the naked flailing on the part of hack screenwriters to give their cardboard cutouts something to say. I imagine the room full of script doctors trying to figure out how to make their bad guy stand out as unique, getting bored, turning on the television and seeing a Full House rerun. Dave Coulier and his woodchuck puppet provided the muse of raw poetry that day.