The stray bits of off-the-wall humor and the talent of the cast that has been assembled (and mostly wasted) keep threatening to make the picture odder than it is. But they don't work. Director Dominic Sena ("Kalifornia") and screenwriter Scott Rosenberg ("Con Air") go strictly by the numbers. But what numbers? The rules of narrative and character development that govern the sort of movies Bruckheimer makes bear the same relation to the very idea of movies that the pod people in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" do to human beings.

But I'd be lying if I didn't admit to getting at least some moments of brain-dead visceral fun out of this picture. Nicolas Cage plays a retired car thief whose younger brother, Giovanni Ribisi, has followed him into the business -- disastrously. The younger crook has screwed up a big job for a major badass (Christopher Eccleston), and Cage is pressed into fulfilling the job to save his brother's life. In descending order of plot importance, there's also Delroy Lindo as the cop who never managed to bust Cage and is itching to bring him in, Robert Duvall as the wise old pro whom Cage enlists to mastermind the job and Angelina Jolie as the squeeze Cage left behind when he went straight.

All the conflicts between old ties and living an honest life are laughably bad. You could chop them out of the movie without anyone caring, especially since they add a flabby half-hour and get in the way of the only thing anyone wants to see. To reiterate: watch cars go fast and get fucked up. Cage and crew have to steal 50 high-grade cars in a night to help the baddie meet the order he's promised to a foreign buyer.

Showing a bunch of top-flight car thieves at work requires a director who knows how to impart information in razor-thin shards. Sena just falls back on clichéd fast cutting that barely gives you enough time to see what the characters are doing or the felonious gizmos they're using to do it. Still, you realize that the movie has at least got something of a hook in you when you wince at the bumps or scrapes the stolen cars take.

Watching people steal things is one of the true illicit pleasures of the movies, a chance to leave behind all the morality that governs day-to-day life. Speed is another one of those pleasures. So there's a kick to be had in seeing the thieves effortlessly turn over engines and glide Mercedes and Mustangs away from their rightful owners, or in watching cars screaming down city streets or suddenly going airborne.

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