Like cars themselves, some car chase thrillers are built to last, others such as Gone In 60 Seconds are meant to have the brief shelf life of a Formula One practice car.

This is fast, flash and forgettable bubblegum entertainment from producer Jerry Bruckheimer and leading man Nicolas Cage, the blockbuster stable that delivered the adrenaline-fuelled Con Air and The Rock. As before, the policy is no brain, plenty of gain, allied to a refusal to take matters seriously.

Cage has always had the capacity to switch off from the serious acting of Leaving Las Vegas or Bringing Out The Dead to strut his way through comic-book blockbuster roles. For Gone In 60 Seconds, he does not so much strut as cruise his way through a simple plot that takes far fewer than 60 seconds to summarise: Cage's Randall 'Memphis' Raines, retired king of car thiefs, must return to his old ways to steal 50 top-of-the-range cars in one night or his brother is for the depot crusher.

Kid brother (Giovanni Ribisi) has upset a tough-nut Brit villain (Christopher Eccleston) with an Italian name and a Manchester drawl, and now Memphis must do the honourable brotherly thing. There is both pleasure and pain in store; he loves motors so much he gives each car to be nicked a girl's name and yet he experiences relationship problems with them, especially the highly-strung, Eleanor, a Shelby Mustang GT 500 that he leaves until last with a score-settling policeman (Delroy Lindo) finally closing in.

Don't go looking for any of the dignity in Cage that Clint Eastwood brought to his last hurrah as a cowboy in Unforgiven. Like his Memphis nickname, the moody character of Raines is hastily skimmed over by screenwriter Scott Rosenberg, whose script is as superficial as a mirage, and Cage does little more than give himself newly-sandy locks, reminiscent of Steve McQueen in Bullitt.

Indeed, wherever you turn, Gone In 60 Seconds owes its debt to other movies. It starts out as a re-make of a cult 1974 HB Halicki movie then borrows from The Magnificent Seven as Raines rounds up his old gang for one final job. There's garage boss Otto, a dignified Rubert Duvall out-acting all and sundry as usual; there's Sway, a slim chance for blond, dreadlocked Angelina Jolie to reprise her Oscar-nominated bad-girl bodywork from Girl, Interrupted without the inconvenience of having to act; and there's the monosyllabic Sphinx, for which Hammer Horror footballer Vinnie Jones amusingly reprises his hard-nut cameo from Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels in a Hollywood debut that allows him to be enigmatic by keeping his mouth shut.

Viscious Vinnie is not enough. Bullitt lives on in the memory for always; Gone In 60 Seconds is gone in 60 seconds.