Grrrrr, I’m angry!
This is either this month’s Nicolas Cage mortgage payment or someone ran a reality show with the prize of Cage financing and starring in films made by randomly selected amateurs. How else can you explain Season of the Witch, The Wicker Man and Bangkok Dangerous all from the last 5 years? And I’ll bet he had no idea that Kick-Ass or Bad Lieutenant would turn out as good as they did!
Anyway here’s Drive Angry, a shitty slapdash over the top piece of ridiculous with misguided style definitely taking precedence over any semblance of substance.
I was actually pondering just how to insinuate the afterworld elements of Drive Angry without giving the film’s main hook away when I read this outline trying to see who the lead actress was:
“In the high-octane, 3D action-adventure Drive Angry, Nicolas Cage stars as Milton, a hardened felon who has broken out of hell intent on finding the vicious cult who brutally murdered his daughter and kidnapped her baby.”
Well slim excuse of a hook gone. (It’s Amber Heard too, which proves she is both unbelievably hot and similarly unmemorable seeing as I’ve seen her in a few other films recently and every time I need to look her name up. Still hot, especially in the short-shorts…)
“Ahhhh, wind through the wig…”
So Cage is a stubbly loner named Milton, with the usual subtle hairpiece. Milton is driven by dark memories and is on a mission to… well you can read it above. Heard plays Piper, the usual ‘way too hot to be a waitress’ waitress and a potty mouth who sings along to such classics as ‘Fuck the pain away’ on the radio.
A tall angular faced man in a suit who calls himself the Accountant (William Fichtner) is in hot pursuit, and the cult leader in this film is unbelievably enough the least over the top thing in it, operating at a level that by comparison might be described as subdued.
For some reason the cult holds an impromptu meeting to explain the rest of the plot – in a closed saloon where Piper just happens to be hiding – yep it’s that kind of clumsy coincidence film.
The rest of the film is a dumb-ass ‘Year 7 creative writing’ with profanity, Dukes of Hazzard car chases, nudity and bloodshed. (I actually jotted down the Dukes reference before the closing sequences where a spitting image of the General Lee is busted out.)
Before the hastily injected ‘deep theological’ elements are shoehorned in – that ended up being so ineffective they said ‘fuck it’ and gave the twist away before the film even opened – Cage lurches around from scene to scene with every action supported by its own unnecessary guitar riff, he even gets to bang a chick and get attacked by a group of insidious bad guys simultaneously. No biggie, he caps six of the attackers without, ummmm, dismounting.
A while later Cage is shot through the head – the left eye more specifically – again no dramas: was meaning to wear my sunnies anyway!
I won’t even mention the baseball bat pushed through a human body. As in through. Won’t mention it.
Drive Angry is the latest attempt at an alternative Crank, Shoot ‘Em Up, Machete clone overflowing with gratuitousness: nudity, violence and profanity.
The only thing it doesn’t have too much of is common sense, a plotline and entertainment value.
Final Rating – 5 / 10. Nic Cage’s film choices are starting to look a lot less like ‘taking chances’ and more like the desperate grasping of a drowning man.
