Kernel Rating (out of 5): 
MPAA Rating: PG-13 Length: 130 minutes
Age Appropriate For: 13+. This is a movie aimed very pointedly at the teenage-boy demographic, with all the requisite trappings of a PG-13 film: cursing, sexual tension and a kiss between two characters who formerly didn’t like each other, nudity in the form of a man walking nude through an office building (we see his butt), domestic abuse, a few character deaths, and the wanton destruction of street racing that puts tons of bystanders in danger.
It’s not that ‘Need for Speed’ is a bad video-game movie; its visuals and sound editing are stupendous. But the dialogue? The plot development? The characters? All that stuff is a bust.
By Roxana Hadadi
“Need for Speed” would be a better movie with 30 or 40 minutes chopped off, all the dialogue wiped out, and the supporting characters expunged. If this were a movie about a solo driver racing his way across the country for vengeance, that would be great! It would be dark and gripping and memorable. In its current form, though, “Need for Speed” is weighed down by extraneous characters, silly subplots that pad out the runtime, and a thoroughly awful script. It’ll please teenage boys and practically no one else.
