Don’t
let the “off” fool you. Ben Aronoff is transparently modeled on speed boat
designer and manufacturer Donald Aronow. In fact, this film is explicitly based
on Arthur Jay Harris’s non-fiction account of Aronow’s rise, fall, and murder,
so why bother with such a minor name change? Aronoff/now sold boats to the US
Customs Service and plenty of drug runners, but his old associate Meyer Lansky
insisted he chose a side: his. At least that is the version of events presented
in Jodi Scurfield’s Speed Kills (trailer here), which opens
tomorrow in New York.
Think
of this as Casino in the ocean. ‘Noff/Now
was a contractor in Jersey who made a fortune building projects “referred” his
way by Lansky’s outfit, but things got too hot in 1959, so he skedaddled down
to Miami with his family. Initially, he wanted to keep his old mob associates
at arm’s length. Right, good luck with that. Soon after arriving, he got an
eyeful of boat-racing and was immediately hooked. Soon, he was designing and
marketing his own line of cigarette boats. He made a splash by racing his
designs to victory in a number of high-profile races, but fielding and
supporting a full-time racing team would greatly sap the company’s resources.
Hmm, what other markets for power boats could you tap into in the Miami area?
In
a way, Noff/Now is also presented as the DeLorean of boats, but screenwriters
David Aaron Cohen & John Luessenhop suggest he really wanted to divorce
himself from the mob. However, he is still a complete jerk, who cheats on first
wife, played by Jennifer Esposito, and steals away his super-model second wife
from King Hussein of Jordan (seriously, he does). In between getting whacked in
medea res and his tom-catting, Noff/Now participates in a number of predictable
races and several staring contests with Lansky’s thuggish, drug-running nephew,
Robbie Reemer. Plus, he sells a few boats to Vice Pres. George H.W. Bush and
future Treasury Sec. Nicholas Brady.
As
Noffsky, John Travolta never ages a day over the film’s nearly thirty-year span,
probably because he already looks far too old and creaky to be playing the boat
kingpin in his early 1960s racing prime. However, James Remar nearly saves the
day as the hardboiled, bourbon-hardened Lansky. Matthew Modine is also
surprisingly on-target with his more-or-less respectful cameo as Bush Senior.
Tom Sizemore adds some random edginess as the hitman seen in the wrap-around
segments. Unfortunately, Katheryn Winnick and Esposito are grossly under-employed
as Noffy’s wives, but it is downright embarrassing to watch Kellan Lutz as
Reemer, probably the dullest, dreariest, most unsightly mulleted villain to
ever barge across a movie screen.
