Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
5/6/11
This much is clear when it
comes to Hollywood's third 3D Revolution: the Honeymoon period is
over. Thanks in part to the fact that audiences have grown accustomed
to the effect and even more to third-rate conversions like Clash
of the Titans and Chronicles of Narnia:
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader that have made them cynical about just
how much 3D they'll be getting for their money, folks are no longer willing
to pay extra for the honor of watching a movie with glasses on. But,
for all the disappointments I've witnessed, I remain bullish on the technology,
and a movie like Drive Angry reminds me why. Sure, we have
reached the point where 3D alone no longer redeems a bad movie (COUGHBeowulfCOUGH),
but a watchably mediocre horror action flick like this sure does get a
nice charge out of a well-executed third dimension. The key words
there are “well-executed”, and I don't know that any director has shown
more of a sense of how to make 3D work as an amusement park ride than Patrick
Lussier (My Bloody Valentine).
From the moment Nicolas Cage's car slides into the frame and kicks up a
swirling mass of autumn leaves right in our faces, you know Drive Angry
is no Alice in Wonderland.
While its sensibilities are crude to a fault in the early going, the movie
benefits from a solid story and a very strong cast, particularly William
Fichtner, whose Hellish bounty hunter The Accountant immediately claims
a prominent spot on any list of 2011's Great Movie Characters.
John Milton (Nicolas Cage)
lived a sinful life, died, and went to Hell. But now he's busted
out and returned on a trail of vengeance against Satanic cult leader Jonah
King (Billy Burke) who seduced Milton's daughter into his flock then murdered
her and her husband. Now, to REALLY get him mad, King's got his infant
granddaughter and is preparing a ritual sacrifice. Needing a ride,
Milton sabotages the car of waitress Piper (Amber Heard), then “fixes”
it in exchange for a lift. She's got problems of her own, and soon
enough Milton's mixing it up with her two-timing boyfriend Frank (co-writer
Todd Farmer) and the two of them are off on the road together. But
Hell's not about to let its prisoner go without a fight: The Accountant
(William Fichtner) is walking a calm, relentless trail from one of John's
stops to the next, wielding influence over the wicked, seeming invincibility
and a nifty coin trick to get closer and closer to his quarry. So
the race is on: with the help of Piper and his former associate Webster
(David Morse), John Milton's got a score to settle, and Jonah King is about
to get what's coming to him.
Drive Angry's ambitions
are simple: pure 70's-style Grindhouse fun, and how much fun you
find the act of being cheerfully, intentionally vile will say a lot about
how much you enjoy particularly the first half of the movie. As in
Valentine, Farmer seems to have gotten into the writing game as
an excuse to write nude scenes for himself with beautiful equally naked
women: good work if you can get it, I suppose. And while it's
certainly an interesting idea to have Milton stage a gunfight with a dozen
angry cultists AND have sex with a girl he picked up in a bar at the same
time, the Great American Shootout Sex Scene remains to be filmed.
But Heard in particular is on just the right wavelength for this sort of
trashy exercise, and while Drive Angry's sleaze factor is higher
than is really necessary or appropriate to its story, it never made me
want to wash my eyes out with soap the way the worse excesses of, say,
Shoot 'Em Up did. But given that the
best parts of the movie are about redemption and standing up for what's
right, it's tonally bizarre how much it expects viewers to respond to old
school depravity.
Still, there are some things
that go very well indeed here, starting with the 3D. Lussier's way
with a pick-ax to the screen was easier to take for granted in Valentine
because we all assumed this high level of effort would be the rule rather
than the exception in the format. Now we know better, and I really
enjoyed how much the director never takes the depth of field for granted.
Drive Angry isn't just shot in 3D, it's meant to be seen that way
just as much as Avatar, and it has the advantage
of not taking itself at all seriously while it tosses any old crap it can
get its hands on at you. The climactic showdown between Milton and
King is well executed and ends with some serious 3D sound and fury.
Those paying the extra bucks to get a pair of glasses with their tickets
will, for a change, get their money's worth.
But even after the effects
have left your mind, you'll certainly remember the movie's real contribution
to the genre, and that's The Accountant. Fichtner is spectacular
in the role, all confidence and dancer's grace as he executes his job duties
with an attitude pitched wonderfully between high spirits and judgmental
contempt for Earth's creatures. It's clear he feels like the Devil's
gotten a raw deal, that Hell serves a really useful function in the divine
order, and the way he's no more on the side of “satanic” losers like Jonah
King than Milton is makes for a really nifty twist. The fact that
he's got a job to do with extreme prejudice, but will not abide nonsense
like infant sacrifice makes him a delightful wild card in the plot, and
that business where he flips his magic coin and it comes down as whatever
he needs at the moment never gets old. I've always been a huge fan
of Fichtner's, and he may never find a better movie role.
The cast is, in general,
very good, bringing the gravitas of dramatic experience to a plot that
would play, in lesser hands, as a lot of sleazy nonsense. Cage has
perfected B-movie intensity, and the underemployed Morse brings a lot to
the role of his reformed partner in crime. And Burke has a lot more
success than you'd expect getting onto that Jim Jones wavelength:
he's the one part of the movie that really works well because it's vile
rather than being a bit constrained by it.
Other than The Accountant,
nothing in Drive Angry breaks new ground, and it's a movie that
will have DVD viewers' fast-forward fingers getting itchy at times.
But when it's good, it's very good, and Lussier and Farmer are well on
their way to becoming a brand name creative duo for 3D horror. Now,
if only Lussier could learn to restrain some of his more juvenile tendencies
and Farmer could put some clothes on, they might really be on to something.
Those issues aside, the 3D revolution needs a lot more foot soldiers like
them. |
