Climbing Higher Pictures

Nicolas Cage appears to have fully embraced his status as a patently off the wall leading man and channeled into a series of roles which showcase how ridiculous he really can be. I still kind of wish we’d have gotten a chance to see him with a Jamaican accent in Green Hornet, but alas, he managed to get himself fired off that project, apparently one of the only scripts he’s read that he hasn’t ended up acting in. With that in mind, we’ve arrived at Drive Angry 3D, from the director of My Bloody Valentine 3D. Is this the pinnacle of popcorn munching tongue-in-cheek Cage at his finest?

Drive Angry Review

By Ryan Hamelin

Movie Grade: B

You’ve got to hand it to Nicolas Cage. If nothing else, the guy sure knows to have fun at his job, and if Drive Angry is any indication, he’s showing no signs of slowing down. This is completely a midnight crowd type of movie, with ridiculous chase sequences, awesome car stunts, often hilarious dialogue, and all the gratuity a person could expect from a grindhouse movie. In fact, this may be the closest Hollywood has ever come to making a modern day grindhouse movie, not discounting the efforts of Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, but actually acclimating that style to a modern audience’s expectations. It’s all about the ride, and with the pedal pushed to the floor, you’ll be holding on for dear life.

Lets get a few things out of the way first. Yes, the movie is actually called Drive Angry, not Drive Angry 3D. The 3D is being hyped because the movie was actually shot with 3D cameras instead of being post processed like Clash of the Titans. Some of the visual effects exist mostly to serve the gimmicky vibe of the piece, and having Cage shoot bullets into the audience’s face is a tried and true bit of extra-dimensional cheese that feels right at home with the rest of the film. The other main visual effect of note is Amber Heard who proves once again that daisy dukes can, when worn by the right person, cause major mental deficiencies to emerge in male viewers. She’s never looked better, and you want her to survive, if only to lengthen her screen time to its maximum potential.

The ace in the hole is William Fichtner who’s had a great character actor run over the past few decades, with great turns in Fox’s hit show Prison Break and the always classic Armageddon. Yep, he was the NASA astronaut who brought a gun into space. Here he plays The Accountant, the proverbial angel of death who comes up to our world looking for Milton (Cage) in order to bring him back to hell. Fichtner chews every piece of scenery in a given shot, but you can’t take your eyes off him, and he makes for the kind of antagonist you wish they’d make a whole movie entirely about. Billy Burke plays the actual wackjob at the center of our tale, Jonah King, whose psycho religious cult is attempting to sacrifice Milton’s granddaughter and bring a reign of hell on earth. For some reason, watching extremist religious cultists getting their asses handed to them is an incredibly large amount of fun, and I struggle to come up with a more universally despised group in modern culture. You have absolutely no sympathy for any of them, and therefore Milton, despite being particularly brutal, sill plays like an extremely satisfying anti-hero.

The soundtrack hits all the grungy rocking levels you want it to, and the sound design as a whole is spot on, bringing the rev of the muscle car engines to the forefront. As mentioned briefly earlier, some of the special effects really work, and help to accentuate the 3D cinematography. Others just look really, really bad, to the point that you know it was probably intentional. The big ass gun from hell is particularly silly in action, though you certainly appreciate its power despite the weird pentagrams that surround its projectiles. It’s from hell, get it? Sigh.

This is not a film for the particularly faint of heart, or the strong of head. Check your brain at the door and let go of reality, you’ll enjoy it more. A great piece of action fluff, the kind that’s endlessly rewatchable at parties or social gatherings, Drive Angry isn’t trying to be anything more, and therefore succeeds at what it’s intended to be, a great B-movie. That’s not to say that it’s flawless in its execution or that it couldn’t have pushed a lot more in many different ways, but you will not regret the time you spend in a theater with this one.