Director: Patrick Lussier (My Bloody Valentine, Dracula 2000)
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Amber Heard, William Fichtner
On Blu-Ray + DVD: May 31, 2011
Where did Drive Angry go wrong? It's not supposed to be serious. It's not supposed to be boring. It's supposed to be filled to the brim with ridiculous action sequences and extremely silly dialogue. That's how these grindhouse films are supposed to work. Director Patrick Lussier must not have gotten the memo, because Drive Angry is overlong and overserious, and it is missing the one thing that grindhouse movies thrive on: fun.
A summary of Drive Angry's plot definitely sounds like it should be fun. A man named John Milton (Cage) breaks out of Hell when he learns that a cult leader has murdered his daughter and kidnapped his granddaughter with plans to sacrifice her body to Satan. While on the hunt for the cultist, Milton picks up Piper (Heard), a waitress with a bad case of the cutoff shorts. On their trail is The Accountant (Fichtner), another man from Hell sent to track Milton down and bring him back. Sounds just outlandish enough to work, right? Nope.
It's not the silly plot that drags the film down, though. I love stories like this: a movie that is willing to flaunt its silliness as a positive earns my respect. In fact, the ludicrousness of the Crank movies is exactly why I love them. What drags Drive Angry down is that Drive Angry is such a drag. For some reason, the film is hellbent on taking itself seriously, and it's hard to laugh at the absurdity of what's happening on screen whenever the characters themselves seem so upset about it. For example, there's this thing that The Accountant does a few times, where he throws a coin in the air and it changes into a badge or something. It's a goofy concept (why would someone from Hell need a coin for this?), but, for some reason, the film tries to milk every dramatic second out of the flip, showing it twirling in slow motion in mid-air as The Accountant stares up at it. Another example is when Milton beats up Piper's ex-boyfriend. This scene was ripe for over-the-top gore or at least some funny lines, but all Milton does is punch him a couple times and get Piper to come with him. Drive Angry has far too many of these missed opportunities, and because of that the film is overloaded with dull scenes.
Not that the entire movie is bad. Nic Cage does his damnedest to bring out his natural manic personality here, and his character alone is reason enough to see the movie. The character of Milton is a perfect fit for him, and Cage's monotonous delivery of Milton's lines turns what could have been even more weak dialogue into hilarious one-liners (my favorite: "I don't disrobe before gunplay"). This disrobing scene is easily the most entertaining part of the movie. Milton and Piper stop at a hotel bar and Milton picks up a woman for the night. While they are having sex (hence the disrobe quote), a group of men break into the room and try to kill him. Without missing a thrust, Milton kills them all. It is this kind of absurdity and fun that most of the rest of the movie is missing.
Drive Angry does show flashes of fun, and these flashes are what make the movie worth checking out. But this entertainment is regrettably lacking from the majority of the film. Instead of embracing its grindhouse qualities, the movie plays them down in favor of a halfhearted attempt at serious storytelling. It is this mistake that turns what could have been a campy but awesome hour and a half into the okay but forgettable film that is Drive Angry.
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