Drive Angry (2011)
Directed by Patrick Lussier
Milton is a hardened felon who has broken out of Hell, intent on finding the vicious cult who brutally murdered his daughter and kidnapped her baby. He joins forces with a sexy, tough-as-nails waitress, who's also seeking redemption of her own. Caught in a deadly race against time, Milton has three days to avoid capture, avenge his daughter's death, and save her baby before she's mercilessly sacrificed by the cult.
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If the movie feels a little like a remake of “Race With the Devil” — the old drive-in hit with Peter Fonda and Warren Oates — well, it’s not.
What's really remarkable is how much of this pricey demolition derby feels ripped from cheaper, better drive-in films of yore, most obviously Jack Starrett's classic Race With the Devil and Robert Fuest's The Devil's Rain.
Oh, and his character's name is John Milton, like Al Pacino in The Devil's Advocate, because Hollywood still thinks that referencing Paradise Lost is being subtle.
But that sort of not-too-subtle joke was used up nearly 15 years ago in the similarly devil-themed The Devil’s Advocate.
What's really remarkable is how much of this pricey demolition derby feels ripped from cheaper, better drive-in films of yore, most obviously Jack Starrett's classic Race With the Devil and Robert Fuest's The Devil's Rain.
So it’s not surprising that this characterization harks back to “Ghost Rider” and “Grindhouse,” among others.
It's like a discarded episode from Grindhouse, only longer and less funny.
This one, also in 3-D, doesn't have a screenplay that's nearly as smart as the Tarantino/Rodriguez "Grindhouse" double-bill, which is a movie in the same vein.
Drive Angry 3-D shows the same affection for the genre that Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez lavished on their delectable 2007 double-feature Grindhouse except Drive Angry 3-D is possibly less classy.
Nicolas Cage’s hilarious, split-second cameo as Fu Manchu in Grindhouse’s Werewolf Women of the SS faux trailer must have whetted the actor’s appetite for headlining feature-length throwbacks to the disreputable fare of yore, as evidenced by many of the movies he’s accepted over the last few years.
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Lussier and Farmer’s next project is a remake/reimagining of Clive Barker’s “Hellraiser,” which was initially rumored to be targeting a PG-13 but is now expected to be as R-rated as anything the filmmakers have done so far.
It’s too bad the rest of the movie shows no interest in rising to his level; instead, it contents itself with more cop-car pile-ups than a Blues Brothers sequel, more oafish southern-boy buffoonery than a Smokey and the Bandit reunion and more gleefully gratuitous depravity than a Hellraiser-Saw-Elm Street mash-up.
Patrick Lussier’s Drive Angry tries to spice things up with its effective use of 3D and by cobbling together as many exploitation clichés as possible: the Daisy Duke-wearing hot girl who can kick ass; the badass who grizzles, shoots and drinks; the overqualified character actor providing exposition (David Morse); and, finally, the smooth villain (Billy Burke) with better hair than the hero, if only to compensate for a lack of manhood and, as Rutger Hauer put it in Split Second, “bigger fucking guns.”
Finally, regular scene-stealer Katy Mixon (2009's " All About Steve ") does just that in the small role of Piper's flirtatious co-worker Norma Jean, while genre veteran great Tom Atkins (1982's " Halloween III: Season of the Witch ") gets the best line as crooked police chief Cap: "When I tell you to aim for their tires, I mean aim for their heads."
He got his start working as an assistant editor in the '80s working on TV, and then moved up to cutting shows like "MacGyver" before hooking up with Wes Craven on "Nightmare Cafe," which led to him cutting "New Nightmare," Craven's attempt at redefining his own Freddy Kruger.
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Its everything Quentin Tarantinos Death Proof (2007) ought to have been and never was.
If they wanted to make it exciting, they should have taken a page from Quentin Tarantino ’s recent grindhouse homage, Death Proof , and tried to have more realistic stunts instead of random explosions and gunfire.
( Clive Owen , in the similar -- and similarly disappointing -- steroidal action film " Shoot 'Em Up " at least did a better job of maintaining a Gonzo intensity that Cage can't quite find here.)
And the scene is a complete rip of a funnier and sexier moment between Clive Owen and Monica Bellucci in Shoot ’Em Up, a film much smarter than this one.
Take Death Proof, combine it with Michael Davis’ Shoot ‘Em Up (2007), add a supernatural component, ramp it up and you have Drive Angry 3D.
Although the big shootout in which Milton tries to finish his lovemaking while finishing off an onslaught of would be assassins falls far short of a similar action sequence in "Shoot 'Em Up."
Before I explain why Nicolas Cage is not quite as good at having sex while shooting people in Drive Angry 3-D as Clive Owen was in Shoot 'Em Up, allow me to introduce myself — or reintroduce myself: As a contributing editor at New York, I’ve edited arts coverage, covered film festivals, written scores of profiles , and obsessively analyzed Mad Men .
Despite these visual miscues, Drive Angry should prove certainly amusing enough to those who enjoy the colorful, button-pushing, non-stop lunacy of flicks like Running Scared, Shoot ‘Em Up, Crank, and Smokin’ Aces.