Drive Angry
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You have to give director Patrick Lussier credit. It takes a filmmaker of a specific schlock mentality to make a premise as preposterous as Drive Angry's to work. It's one thing to "go grindhouse." It's another to make such proposed post-modern exploitation sizzle. But thanks to his propensity toward massive amounts of sex and violence, because of his desire to show as much T&A and blood-soaked gore as possible, Lussier lifts this otherwise bizarre action thriller to epic sleazoid proportions. He even makes the acting ATM Nicolas Cage seem relevant again. Talk about your talent!
Our irritable anti-hero is John Milton (Cage), a man who has escaped the maximum security prison that is Hell to keep a deranged cult leader named Jonah King (Billy Burke) from performing a ritualistic sacrifice on his infant grandchild. Since the fake messiah is also responsible for the unspeakably cruel death of his adult daughter and her husband, the vendetta is indeed enough to raise the dead. As luck would have it, he runs into bad-ass butt-kicking waitress Piper (Amber Heard), who loans him her fists, her shapely form, and her souped up American muscle car, to track the freaked out fanatics. As they leave a trail of dead and dying victims in their wake, our duo has only one goal -- get to King before the next full moon. However, they are also being chased by a demonic minion named The Accountant (William Fichtner), a dapper death dealer set on sending Milton back.
With its combination of outlandish storyline and solid edge-of-your-seat adrenaline, Drive Angry is a supernaturally spiked hoot. It's the movie Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof wanted to be, had it the cojones to fully convey its '70s drive-in designs. From the moment we meet Milton, guns blazing and bodies piling up, we know we're in for something mindless. But thanks to Lussier, who managed something equally sly with his update of the seminal slasherMy Bloody Valentine, there's no apologizing for the anarchy. Women are brutalized only to get up and punch back. Innocent bystanders feel the wrath of bedeviled collateral damage, and brainwashed goons line up to have various parts of their body blown off. Between the fire fights and the car chases, Drive Angry has enough excitement to keep you satisfied.
It also helps that the performances are spot on, beginning with the otherwise lamentable Cage. While not fully recapturing his Raising Arizona/Leaving Las Vegas glory days, he makes a compelling fallen idol. HIs interaction with Heard is excellent, especially when you consider that the young actress more than holds her own here. In fact, her no-holds-barred bitchiness will easily win over those not already enamored of her various "charms". While his character has little to do except go bug nuts, Burke gives good evil gonzo. That just leaves Fichtner as the kind of suave yet undeniably sinister servant of the main mangoat, his collection of tics and quirks making his threat even more memorable. He's a great yin to Milton's irate yang.
Lussier then sifts the pieces together into an implausible filmic pastry so flaky and yet flavorful that you can't help but crave seconds. Unlike Faster, which tried to forge its revenge center into a complicated collection of moral debates, Drive Angry is out to smash skulls and chew gum -- and there's nary a piece of cinematic Doublemint to be found. Sure, it's silly and scatological. Yes, some of the plot twists make little logical sense. But this is a movie about a zombified father coming up from the underworld to wreak havoc on those who wronged him. All it has to do is drop any contemporary pretense and deliver the gratuitous goods -- and like any legitimate throwback, Drive Angry does...in solid, splattery spades.
Our irritable anti-hero is John Milton (Cage), a man who has escaped the maximum security prison that is Hell to keep a deranged cult leader named Jonah King (Billy Burke) from performing a ritualistic sacrifice on his infant grandchild. Since the fake messiah is also responsible for the unspeakably cruel death of his adult daughter and her husband, the vendetta is indeed enough to raise the dead. As luck would have it, he runs into bad-ass butt-kicking waitress Piper (Amber Heard), who loans him her fists, her shapely form, and her souped up American muscle car, to track the freaked out fanatics. As they leave a trail of dead and dying victims in their wake, our duo has only one goal -- get to King before the next full moon. However, they are also being chased by a demonic minion named The Accountant (William Fichtner), a dapper death dealer set on sending Milton back.
With its combination of outlandish storyline and solid edge-of-your-seat adrenaline, Drive Angry is a supernaturally spiked hoot. It's the movie Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof wanted to be, had it the cojones to fully convey its '70s drive-in designs. From the moment we meet Milton, guns blazing and bodies piling up, we know we're in for something mindless. But thanks to Lussier, who managed something equally sly with his update of the seminal slasherMy Bloody Valentine, there's no apologizing for the anarchy. Women are brutalized only to get up and punch back. Innocent bystanders feel the wrath of bedeviled collateral damage, and brainwashed goons line up to have various parts of their body blown off. Between the fire fights and the car chases, Drive Angry has enough excitement to keep you satisfied.
It also helps that the performances are spot on, beginning with the otherwise lamentable Cage. While not fully recapturing his Raising Arizona/Leaving Las Vegas glory days, he makes a compelling fallen idol. HIs interaction with Heard is excellent, especially when you consider that the young actress more than holds her own here. In fact, her no-holds-barred bitchiness will easily win over those not already enamored of her various "charms". While his character has little to do except go bug nuts, Burke gives good evil gonzo. That just leaves Fichtner as the kind of suave yet undeniably sinister servant of the main mangoat, his collection of tics and quirks making his threat even more memorable. He's a great yin to Milton's irate yang.
Lussier then sifts the pieces together into an implausible filmic pastry so flaky and yet flavorful that you can't help but crave seconds. Unlike Faster, which tried to forge its revenge center into a complicated collection of moral debates, Drive Angry is out to smash skulls and chew gum -- and there's nary a piece of cinematic Doublemint to be found. Sure, it's silly and scatological. Yes, some of the plot twists make little logical sense. But this is a movie about a zombified father coming up from the underworld to wreak havoc on those who wronged him. All it has to do is drop any contemporary pretense and deliver the gratuitous goods -- and like any legitimate throwback, Drive Angry does...in solid, splattery spades.
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