Drive Angry - Review

Exploitation celebration is harder to get properly right than it takes a low-budget filmmaker to get the boom mike out of the frame. Sometimes it's exceptional guilty bliss like BLACK DYNAMITE or the double-billed event GRINDHOUSE. Other times, you receive true money wasters as BITCH SLAP. DRIVE ANGRY fortunately is able to at least park within these two outcomes, simply as a satisfactory drive-in movie whose great performances and excessive lust for cars and violence is hampered by a poor 3D marketing decision, confusing editing, and script problems.



Nicolas Cage is John Milton, who has escaped the circles of Hell to deliver poetic and visceral justice to a Satanic cult that has killed his daughter and is planning to sacrifice his granddaughter during their pre-apocalypse beer-filled orgy. The only cooperation he has in stopping the cult and their sexy Jim Jones-esque cowboy leader (Billy Burke) is a former waitress, all around ball of fury played exceptionally by Amber Heard. However, the true master of the ceremonies and the macabre is William Fichtner as The Accountant, a wise-cracking servant of the Antichrist whose goofy aloofness masks his advanced chess-like strategic planning.



First things first, the film's 3D element is pure cinematic sludge and a waste to pay. I understand its repetitive uses of "paddle ball" shots but it doesn't justify having to experience the movie severely dimmed of all of its violent vibrancy. All of the gunfights take place at nighttime with no rhythm or reason to what's happening. Even worse, director Patrick Lussier implements heavy frame-cutting montages, thus giving you your first experience of an epileptic seizure in 3D!



The skeleton of this action-comedy-horror film, the acting, the script and the choreography of violence, is at least properly well-executed. Except for maybe Cage, with his stiff "this is me serious" non-emotional delivery, the cast does wonders with the excessively verbal material. I still can't get enough of Fichtner, who seduces the screen with his fluid snake-like arm manipulations to go with his serpent face. Lussier and Todd Farmer's screenplay is tight with some originality, though they can't hide the fact that Cage's character is practically immortal and impossible to worry about. They also plagiarize THE TERMINATOR films heavily, which I don't recall as being a grindhouse film unless we are talking about LADY TERMINATOR. Still, there is some great callbacks to TWO-LANE BLACKTOP, ROLLING THUNDER, and the infamous Guyana films along with some surprising small roles by famous 80's and 90's character actors.



With its awful 3D techniques, editing problems, and a truly horrible nu-metal soundtrack, DRIVE ANGRY could have been yet another failed attempt to do justice to the garbage bags of American cinema. Instead, it jumps out with some great acting and a filthy mouth. This film has already achieved infamous status thanks to its fantastic shootout scene where Cage kills several cronies while guzzling alcohol and having sex with a floozy waitress. If they doesn't peak your interest, you should stay safe with Hollywood's crappy outputs.







FINAL REVIEW: 3 / 5