Movies Reviews

Drive Angry 3D – Movie Review

By Anne Brodie Feb 23, 2011, 14:38 GMT

The story centers on a vengeful father who goes after the men who killed his daughter and kidnapped his granddaughter. ...more

This is among the guiltiest of cinematic pleasures, pure unadulterated trash wrapped in a well-made package.  It’s trash that’s so trashy that it achieves a kind of greatness.

Our favorite eccentric Nic Cage is beautifully cast as Milton, Hell’s bounty hunter. Sidekick Amber Heard is perfect Noir pin-up girl Piper, trashy mouthed, pouty and quick with a gun. They join forces to hunt down a backwoods preacher responsible for killing Milton’s daughter and kidnapping his infant granddaughter.

They tool around in a cool vintage car loaded with Milton’s vintage weaponry and set off for a little rage on the road.

Piper is keen to go along with Milton.  She’s lost her job at the coffee shop for talking back to her handsy boss while trying to feed a poor family.  Her thug boyfriend played by co-writer Todd Farmer, beats her and always promises more.  Milton notices him slam her to the ground and intervenes in unforgettable fashion with help from an air conditioner.

And he and Piper make for the woods in that revved up grandpa car where much of the action takes place.

Piper finds she is comfortable and safe around Milton.  She’s understandably allergic to men, but her connection with him is intuitively solid.  They form a father daughter bond.  There’s no romantic connection between them.  The writers carefully give them other, age appropriate lovers, a conservative choice in light of the stars’ 23 year age difference.

Out of the blue and from a cool car, steps The Accountant (William Fichtner), dressed to the nines, as supremely poised as a GQ model, suddenly transported into Outback USA, smelling not of men’s fragrance but threat.  He is there to collect a bill.  And he is neither patient nor kind.   Watch for a sensational sequence in which The Accountant and the ex-boyfriend mix things up. And I mean way up.

The Preacher (Billy Burke) is evil incarnate.  He’s ornery, blood thirsty, runs a kind of coven of followers unencumbered by conscience to slow him down; after all, he’s planning a satanic sacrifice of Milton’s granddaughter.  He beckons his gun crazy acolytes with a long, finely pointed fingernail.

The stunts fight scenes and special effects are extraordinary.  Milton blasts it out with several gunslingers while a naked woman clings to his body … you want to rub your eyes and ask if you’re seeing what you think you’re seeing.  It’s that kind of movie experience, strange, mad, bad and dangerous to know.

One of the films strengths is its colorful secondary cast of toothless hillbillies and hicks, devil worshippers and truck stop owners.  It’s a strange world of the B movie sort in the wilds of Louisiana, thick with smoke and superstition, swamps and dusty roads, a perfect depiction of a cinematic time and place that whips us in the face with its force.

Regarding 3D, it heightens much of the picture but in the end isn’t crucial.  The key to Drive Angry is its unforgettable characters and that crazy, upside down world that holds life and death so closely together.   Drive Angry is for the thick-skinned.

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35mm action adventure
Written by Patrick Lussier, Todd Farmer, Rene Besson
Directed by Patrick Lussier
Opens: Feb 25
MPAA:Rated R for strong brutal violence throughout, grisly images, some graphic sexual content, nudity and pervasive language
Country: US
Language: English