Drive Angry

Drive Angry is a strange movie. Maybe it's because it wasn't the movie we expected it to be, or that it tried to be too many things at once. Starring Nicholas Cage at his scenery chewing finest, what we thought it was a movie about road rage and instead it turned out to be a supernatural action movie - kind of like a bug fix version of Ghost Rider. The annoying thing about Drive Angry is that it rides the fine line between low brow and high brow, much like The Car. It's just good enough to not be completely bad, and because of that you want it to be better.

After a confusing intro with a car driving across a bridge in Hell, Cage's character John Milton (hint hint) crosses paths with a tough and pretty road stop waitress, Piper. Amber Heard was awesome as an empowered heroine who gets caught up in Milton's metaphysical mission. It is confusingly told, but Milton has returned topside to avenge the deaths of his daughter and son in law who were murdered by cultists and rescue his granddaughter. Along the way there's The Accountant, played with Agent Smith like weirdness by William Fichtner and a cult leader who looks like a dollar store Elvis.

I sense part of the problem is that too much was crammed into the movie and the title starts to lose meaning. There's a great comic book feel to the movie, with lots of love going into the character design and costuming. The first third of the movie is pretty tasteless and reminded me of Cranked. After Piper learns of Milton's quest, the tone changes considerably and the movie becomes less ballsy and more heartfelt. Some more careful editing and more showing and less telling would have helped. I feel that the sheriff had an untold story in there, or the producers couldn't juggle four plots.

The CGI budget must not have been very big because some of the effects weren't very good for a 2011 movie, but they were passable. The violence was really squishy and mildly gross at times. There were some great car stunts and I loved that they got a Winnebago to boogie like it did :D

At the end of the day, the movie is a pretty entertaining popcorn flick - if you liked Ghost Rider, you'll be all right with this one.

( But I gotta wonder...is it me or are there a lot of phallic references... )