May. 15, 2013 - Issue #917: The Roadtrip Issue
Drive Angry
No surprise there, but nothing of much interest either. After all, it's hard to shift gears and become interested in one man's searing, suffering pain over his daughter's horrible death after we've just seen: a man speared through the eye, another axed in the forehead, a woman splattered by a car, two cops killed and a dozen thugs mowed down. But then, the man even recalls his daughter's death in gruesome, exploitative detail: "burning is nothing compared to watching your child's head torn off."
The man's Milton (Nicolas Cage), and any relation to the great 17th-century writer would only be found in a movie that doesn't have, as its best line, "fuckin' devil worshippers, they freak me out ... turn my shit white." That's some of the tough talk from take-no-BS but oh-so-sexy Piper (Amber Heard), playing a kick-ass Daisy to Milton's unkillable Bo in a story that's Dukes of Hazzard meets Ghost Rider. Y'see, Milt's come up from Hades to rescue his infant granddaughter from, and avenge his daughter's murder by, Satanic cult-leader Jonah King.
William Fichtner, as the Accountant (Lucifer's death-collector), offers a breezy, just-doing-my-job relentlessness, lending the movie the winking, faux-seriousness it needs. Otherwise, especially coming after the carnage of so much pulpy fiction, backstories and explanations drag, while gestures towards emotion seem pointless—who'd want to save and raise a baby in this distorted South's pit of violence, anyway? The action's mostly comic-book broadness or slo-mo fetishizing, the villain—in Bond-movie fashion—takes his time before never killing anyone, and nobody but Milton can shoot well. The true immortal, though, is the American muscle car, which (despite all the hellfire reminding us of global warming) keeps on roarin' on ... but then, what else can we expect of a movie called Drive Angry?
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Drive AngryOpens Now playing
Directed by: Patrick Lussier
Written by: Patrick Lussier & Todd Farmer
Featuring: Nicolas Cage, Amber Heard, William Fichtner
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