Lackluster And Poorly Written, ‘Drive Angry’ Stalls

Anyone who has seen the movies on Nicholas Cage's resume recently had no expectations when walking in to see Drive Angry 3-D. Perhaps the bar being set so low is the reason that this movie was particularly painful. Director Patrick Lussier certainly achieved something: The creation of a movie even more terrifying than D-Wars and Scary Movie 3. And for those who wondered whether the 3-D aspect would be redeeming, it wasn't.

 

Lussier seems to have created Drive Angry as an attempt to compensate for a lack of substance with violence. The first scenes are dominated by guns, explosions, and blown-off body parts. The movie's chance at success, however, ended when Nicholas Cage began speaking. His poorly written lines seem to have come from a script scribbled on a napkin with crayon written by Forrest Gump during the Vietnam War. After being in decent films such as Con Air and National Treasure, Cage proves how wrong we are to hold any hopes of him redeeming his career.

 

 The movie's target audience is screamingly obvious as the next few moments introduces a female lead in Amber Heard. Her character, Piper, exemplifies the angry, violent tomboy with a pretty face and a stellar body: everything a 21-year-old guy could want in a female protagonist. The character development in this story is about as interesting as tapioca. This is an unfair statement, though, as you could hardly expect too much characters so poorly written. The bottom line is that good movies should allow audiences to relate to an aspect of a character.

 

Cage's character is Milton, a middle aged, silent killer with social issues that cause him to be a reclusive freak. He is initially on a quest to find a mysterious person, his intentions being unknown until the plot develops further. He meets Piper, a young woman with an equal number of problems. She gives him a ride to help his search but ends up being mixed into his journey through an unfortunate turn of events. While Cage and Heard are looking for this elusive person another man seems to be chasing Cage. William Fichtner plays the eerie and positively exacerbating character known only to us as the "accountant." Honestly, by the end of the movie, the absolute havoc that ensues is somewhat comforting as it foretells the quickly approaching end of the movie.

 

And so the movie ended. Looking back there were two things that truly stood out of this movie: the dialogue, and the portrayal of Central and Southern America. As far as one can tell from the movie, every person from Colorado to Florida either has the no intelligence or is a devil worshipper. Yes, devil worshipper. Just when you think that a movie cannot fall any lower, the director throws something like devil worshipping into the hole and you sink another five hundred feet.

 

This is a decent watch only for anyone who simply wants to see mindless sex and gore. There is a scene where Nicholas Cage simultaneously shares passionate moments with a waitress, performs acrobatic maneuvers, and kills 10 guys with weapons. He even gets cattle-prodded in this little episode. This movie is about 50 percent violence, 30 percent bad dialogue, and 20 percent sex and nudity. And bad dialogue means lines that are on par with creativity of a middle school boy.

 

Ultimately, viewers will see Drive Angry only because they were hoping for the redemption of Nicolas Cage. However if you have absolutely, nothing else to do, want a good laugh (a warped sense of humor might be required), and want to take a match to the dollar bills being spent on this film, avoid this movie at all costs.