DRIVE ANGRY - REVIEW


Drive Angry probably boasts THE best storyline of the year so far: Nicolas Cage breaks out of Hell in a car. I'll repeat that: breaks out of HELL, in a CAR. This is gonna be sweeeeet!

The trailers promised extreme Grindhouse-style silliness the likes of which Robert Rodriguez (Planet Terror, Machete) would be proud of with Nic Cage at his wackiest, exciting (read: ridiculous) action scenes and plenty of facepalm-inducing dialogs. Alas, you'll need to lower your expectations just a little if you are to truly enjoy Drive Angry.

There was a great film in there somewhere (great as in so bad it's good, of course) but, unfortunately, something went wrong along the way. For one thing, Cage is at his most soporific here and goes for monotone swagger rather than Bad Lieutenant-type goofiness. Which is not to say he doesn't entertain: seeing the guy fully dressed having sex whilst blasting the bad guys with a giant gun, standing randomly staring at fire or saying the worst lines known to man is admittedly fun. Otherwise, though, he's way too deadpan and it never feels like he's getting into the spirit of things.

Also, the action is a mess. Sure it works on a trashy-enough level that you can enjoy it and look past the dodgy CGI but you just wish they'd gone even further with that. There's a serious lack of creativity here. The 3D makes up for a lot of those shortcomings but adds new ones as the greenscreen becomes another character altogether!

Decent, silly support is offered by William Fichtner as a kind of Hellish Agent Smith and the rest of the cast is adequately hammy and/or boring. The film itself is nothing more than a B movie to Cage's own Ghost Rider and could pretty much be renamed Ghost Rider 1.5 without anyone noticing the difference...or caring.

To be fair, I did enjoy it. The story made no sense and the film had loads of flaws, yes, maybe it didn't live up to my expectations but...

Nicolas Cage breaks out of HELL...in a CAAAAAAAR!!!

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