For anybody tired of digital movie car chases that, while fast and furious, routinely defy the laws of physics, here’s one where the cars and stunts are real (mostly) and spectacular. A cross-country sprint followed by a daredevil dash through rural California, “Need for Speed” is a car-lover’s dream.

Given state-of-the-art stunts and 3-D cinematography, it’s a trip.

But “Need for Speed” also makes the journey from video game to big screen without the curse of logic and without the benefit of a punchy, pithy script for its cliched characters to quote. Dumb? They’ve almost out-dumbed the dumbest “Fast and Furious” movie.

Aaron Paul of “Breaking Bad” is Tobey, a car builder and racer from rural New York whose rivalry with the hometown boy (Dominic Cooper) who made it to the Indy 500 reveals the consequences of tearing it up on public highways. Somebody gets killed, on top of all the innocent bystanders and their SUVs, school buses and mommy-vans that they run off the road.

Tobey gets out of jail, rounds up his posse (Scott Mescudi, Rami Malek, Ramon Rodriguez) and sets out for revenge.

He talks a billionaire collector into lending him a Shelby Mustang that he customized. Tobey’s team includes a pilot (Mescudi) who can tip him off about directions and police lying in wait, and a chase truck that can refuel that thirsty beast on the road. And the car comes with a navigator / co-driver who is the owner’s hot blonde car-acquisitions specialist, played by Imogen Poots.

They’re dashing from upstate New York, through New York City to Detroit, then Indiana, Arizona’s Monument Valley, Utah’s Bonneville salt flats and into San Francisco, where the real race will start. The real race, the DeLeon, is run by a mysterious, manic and motor-mouthed millionaire (Michael Keaton).

This is a car fanatic’s dream. Stuntman-turned-director Scott Waugh (“Act of Valor”) makes this into a stunt team tour de force with enough of the driving tricks plainly performed by the cast to make this a car-culture picture of which Steve McQueen might approve.

The cast doesn’t have the sassy swagger of the “Fast & Furious” crew. But the actors are second bananas here — to the Koenigsegg Ageras, Saleens and Shelby Mustang that feed America’s “Need for Speed,” on screen and off. And, whatever the screenwriter’s failings, the cars deliver.

Roger Moore is a staff writer for McClatchy-Tribune News Service.

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