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Movie Review: 'Drive Angry' the ultimate car chase film

Submitted by Sam Bauman on Tue, 03/01/2011 - 1:23am

The movie "Drive Angry," currently playing at the Fandango Galaxy cineplex in Carson City, is practically one long car-chase movie, starring Nicholas Cage and Amber Heart.

To fully enjoy this film you have to believe totally that there is an actual physical Heaven and Hell, not that the two are metaphors of consciousness. But don't fret about it; religious ideas don't count here.

Cage plays a convicted and dead criminal who escapes from Hell to rescue his murdered daughter's daughter (got that?) from becoming a sacrifice to a Satan cult. He chases a pickup with three men inside, manages to wreck it and kill two of the men inside and gives the third a warning to the cult leader.

He now needs a car since he wrecked his chasing the pickup, so at a diner he meets Piper (Amber Heard) who has just taken down a cook who was groping her. She goes back to her motel that she is sharing with her lover only to find him frolicking with a blonde. Amber shows her chops again by taking down the now former lover and stealing his car.

Milton (Cage) fixes her car when it goes kaboom (all the cars in this movie are old muscle cars) and then the two take off for where the baby is to be sacrificed but first battle the cult leader Jonah King (Billy Burke, no relation to the 40s comedy star, just same name).

Meanwhile, the Accountant (William Fichtner, easily the smoothest actor in the film) shows up on his mission to return Milton to Hell. Apparently he is Satan's man charged with bringing Milton home and keeping the books up to date.

Milton and Piper make it to the church where the cult folk are meeting and a bloodily battle ensues. Milton is shot in the face and left for dead but survives and chases King, who has Piper in a Winnebago RV. Somehow Milton in a muscle car can't even catch the RV (Milton survived having an eye shot out) and everybody winds up at the cult's woodsy glen where Milton drives around shooting and killing all around in one of the most murderous car-chase scenes in cinema history.

King is killed by the God Gun, which destroys a person's soul so they can't go to Heaven or Hell, and after giving his granddaughter to Piper, Milton goes off with the Accountant in another muscle car, apparently on their way back to Hell.

Why Cage allowed himself to star in such a mishap of a movie is hard to understand; he had made a couple of losers recently. For Heard it's a chance to show her martial arts skills and come out fairly well in this turkey. Fitchnet comes across as a smooth one, shining all the way.

Directed and co-written by Patrick Lussier (with Todd Farmer) everything rushes along so you won't be bored; baffled maybe. As mentioned, this almost a movie made up of car chases, crashes, wrecks and automotive mayhem. Some nudity and more use of the "F"word than any film in recent memory. Doesn't make for sparkling dialogue.

P.S., Oh, yeah, forgot to mention that this movie is in 3D. It is and 3D can't really save it. The 3D is unobtrusive most of the time except when the Accountant tosses a coin in the air and thus at the audience. Thought 3D had gotten beyond such gimmicks.

— Sam Bauman

Cast
— Nicolas Cage as Milton
— Amber Heard as Piper
— Katy Mixon as Norma Jean]
— David Morse as Webster[
— Billy Burke as Jonah King
— William Fichtner as The Accountant]
— Christa Campbell as Mona Elkins
— Charlotte Ross as Candy
— Tom Atkins
— Bryan Massey
— James Hébert[
— Brent Henry as Teen #2
— Kendrick Hudson as Burly
— Simone Williams as Leopard Lady
— Kenneth Wayne Bradley as Man In Wig

Directed by: Patrick Lussier
Produced by: Michael De Luca
Written by: Todd Farmer and Patrick Lussier
Music by: Michael Wandmacher
Cinematography: Brian Pearson
Editing by: Patrick Lussier and Devin C. Lussier

Rated R, runs one hour and 44 minutes.

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