NEED FOR SPEED A GEARHEAD’S DELIGHT.

It’s not far into the 3-D video game made flesh called Need For Speed — a car chase that answers the age-old question, “What would it be like to stick your head into a 900-horsepower engine for 130 minutes?” — when you realize what you’re in for.

It comes during a race along the streets of little Mt. Kisco, N.Y., as high-performance cars speed along the town roads and nearby highways, in and out of the wrong lanes, squealing around corners with all the excitement of, well, of cars going fast. Suddenly, a homeless man appears pushing a shopping cart. One of the cars smashes into the cart, knocking his belongings over the street. Then they all speed off.

And the homeless guy? Just another forgotten victim of the need for speed: Later, innocent bystanders, children in a school bus and many policemen will be variously endangered, pushed into accidents or sent flying bumper over exhaust system as the hotshots race their multimillion-dollar cars through crowded cities or along busy highways.

There’s a plot of sorts. Bluecollar mechanic Tobey Marshall (Aaron Paul) agrees to work with local racing star Dino Brewster ( Dominic Cooper). He’ll fix up Dino’s $2.7-million Shelby Mustang in return for a share of the profits. But as these things tend to do, it turns into to a race for all the money, with the rivals driving gull-wing Ageras — Need for Speed is a primer in automobiles you’ve never heard of and can’t afford — in a race that results in a death.

Tobey is innocent of any wrongdoing — except for reckless endangerment, of course — but he goes to jail, and when he comes out he vows revenge. How? Another race, of course. He asks lovely Julia (Imogen Poots), who buys cars for millionaire clients, to lend him the Mustang and he’ll drive across the U.S. to take on Dino in an illegal road race in California. She says yes, because who wouldn’t lend a $2.7-million car to an ex-con for a cross-country jaunt?

The stunts in Need for Speed are real: No computer pixels were harmed in the making of this film. It’s the people who are fake.

Tobey and Dino are pretty well glum and glummer and Paul, best known as Jesse on Breaking Bad, lacks the movie star charisma to make him interesting enough to care about. Frankly, the Mustang has more personality.