I don't remember where I first read it, but there was a critique about the unfinished
Gone in 60 Seconds 2 that I thought was pretty fair. First, we can probably all agree that the greatest strength of H.B. Halicki's movies was his ability to do amazing things with ordinary machines. The
original Gone in 60 Seconds was the gold standard (as I noted
here), with Halicki turning southern California inside out using nothing but a Mustang Sportsroof. In his follow-up,
The Junkman, he showed how a bone-stock Corvette could get out of a blockaded restaurant parking lot.
Deadline Auto Theft was essentially a re-release of
Gone in 60, with a few extra scenes of cars getting destroyed added in.
For
Gone in 60 Seconds 2, Halicki decided to change things up. He wanted to expand the scope, and make his character an international thief who specialized in "high profile" jobs. Of the few scenes that were filmed, the big payoff was a chase sequence involving a vehicle called the Slicer: a jet-powered, armor plated wedge that looked like an oversized BattleBots contenstant. It was very cool, and anyone with a daily commute is sure to fantasize about owning one. But for Halicki, it was essentially playing in
God Mode. We liked seeing how he could get out of the road hazards that happened during his escape. So when an unstoppable machine means his escape includes "driving straight" followed by "driving straight" and "keep driving straight," it loses some of the appeal.
The aforementioned critique suggested that, while a lot of "Slicer" scenes were filmed, it was only so that there was plenty of material to work with in the editing room—Halicki never intended to have much of it in the final movie. I like to agree with that idea, as Halicki was always a stunt man who knew how to get the most from his vehicles. Simply smashing a straight line through everything seemed to go against his style.
That said, I have to give kudos to the engineers and builders who created
the Slicer. Those scenes showed that it was an incredibly capable vehicle capable of going through anything it was pointed at.
