Mania Grade: C+
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Info:
- Blu-ray: Drive Angry 3D
- Rating: R
- Starring: Nicolas Cage, Amber Heard, Willam Fitchner, Billy Burke
- Written By: Todd Farmer
- Directed By: Patrick Lussier
- Distributor: Summit Entertainment
- Original Year of Release: 2011
- Extras: See Below
- Series:
Drive Angry Blu-Ray Review
Nic Cage is Back from Hell…Again! By
Tim Janson
June 12, 2011
Nicolas Cage and Amber Heard in Drive Angry
© Summit Entertainment
I don’t care what anyone says…I like Nicolas Cage. Is he choosy with the scripts he selects? Maybe not, but if someone was waving $10 million bucks or so in my face I’d have a hard time telling them no, too. Not every film needs to be submitted for Oscar consideration. Ever counted how many bad films Donald Sutherland has been in? I seriously think Sutherland is in every film made. The guy likes to work, more power to him and more power to Cage. Bad movie or not, Cage always seems to be having fun and he always gives an effort.
Drive Angry is kind of the prototypical Cage film, at least as far as the films he’s made in the last five years or so…lots of action, lots of special effects, not much character development and gaping plot holes but somehow it all manages to entertain you. Cage plays a criminal condemned to Hell who escapes the underworld to avenge the murder of his daughter and rescue his infant granddaughter from a Satanic cult. His name in the film is John Milton…get it? John Milton…Paradise Lost…Okay so Drive Angry isn’t all that clever admittedly.
He discovers that the cult and their leader Jonah King (Billy Burke) intends to sacrifice the infant in a ritual. Milton hooks up with a feisty waitress named Piper (Heard), rescuing her from her abusive boyfriend as they race against time to rescue the baby. However Hell isn’t too happy about Milton’s escape and has dispatched the dapper-suited “Accountant” (William Fitchner) to bring Milton back to Hell. It’s the slimmest of reasons for huge gunfights, car crashes, lots of blood and gore, and naked women. Director Patrick Lussier brings these same elements to Drive Angry that served him so well in My Bloody Valentine 3D. I mean, Milton conducts a full out gunfight in a motel room with a swarm of cultists, all the while boinking a cocktail waitress without missing an…ahem…thrust. Crude, yes, but pretty damn hilarious.
Sit back with a cold one and toss down some popcorn or choice of snack and don’t look to deeply at Drive Angry, else you’ll discover its many flaws. For example, just how did Milton escape from Hell in the first place? Moreover, he escapes with a weapon called God Killer (if you’ve read Simon Green’s Nightside series, think the Speaking Gun) which can kill anything irrevocably. When the Accountant asks Milton how he managed to get out of Hell with the God Killer he merely says he just “walked in and took it”. Nice to know Hell as such strict security measures that someone can escape with all-power artifacts more easily than you can swipe a pack of gum at Wal-Mart (not that I have any personal experience). And why the heck did the Accountant all of a sudden go soft and help Milton? Like there are not a billion souls in Hell with a sob story?
Cage for a change reins in his performance and mostly delivers his lines with a stone-faced expression that hardly twitches a facial muscle. Burke plays his cult leader like a demonically smarmy Jim Morrison, complete with tight pants and medallions around his neck. One wishes that we had seen a bit more of him. Heard is definitely smoking hot and would look great folding socks let alone kicking ass in a pair of Daisy Dukes. Drive Angry is a good 15 – 20 minutes too long. Lussier easily could have chopped out the entire scene when we meet Milton’s friend Webster (David Morse) and the film would not have missed a beat. Entertaining? Yes! Quality entertainment? Meh! You could find worse ways to blow a couple of hours.
Blu-Ray Extras
Unfortunately the extras are a bit slim. There is an audio commentary track with Lussier and writer Todd Farmer that is fresh and fun although Lussier apparently had lost his voice as he was raspy throughout.
Deleted Scenes (2:00) Two very short deleted scenes. I mean really, why include anything at all?
Access: Drive Angry – Similar to Warner Bros. Maximum Movie mode, this lets you watch the film with picture in a picture that provides pop-up interviews, behind-the-scenes footage, film trivia, and more.
The Accountant let him go to stop them from sacrificing the baby. He told him that Satan hates the idea of sacrificing children in his name.