Drive Angry (2011): Dir: Patrick Lussier / Cast: Nicolas Cage, Amber Heard, William Fichtner, Billy Burke, David Morse: Pointless and brutally excessive road kill about vengeance. Nicolas Cage plays a sorry sap who drives out of Hell in search of the cult that murdered his daughter and kidnapped his granddaughter. Apparently this cult, lead by the psychotic Jonah King, is set to sacrifice the baby at the next full moon. He is joined on his quest by a waitress who obviously has nothing better to do. After he intervenes when she is being beat up by her cheating boyfriend, she gladly tags along. This is all very stupid but director Patrick Lussier presents some fantastic 3D effects. The film takes on an appeal very similar to the Grindhouse films only this sucks. Cage spends much of the film either driving fast or shooting cultist. What fails here is that his escape from Hell is pure nonsense, and his shootout while in the midst of sex is even less believable. Amber Heard as his waitress companion seems to come from a long list of women since Angelina Jolie who can kick the crap out of people. She is never believable but she puts on this bullshit "I'm with you all the way" nonsense. William Fichtner plays Satan's accountant who is out to bring Cage back to Hell. Why Satan has an accountant is never known. Billy Burke plays Jonah King who is basically a target for a nasty departure. David Morse, a capable actor, is also wasted in this hellish trash. The Biblical or supernatural elements are laughable enough to make viewers want to drive angry right over the film in full speed. Score: 3 / 10

Take a look at the poster for this film - it depicts Nicolas Cage driving a car (looking worried) and Amber Heard revealing flesh. To be fair... the film-makers can't be accused of misleading anyone. This is the epitome of good, dumb, fun.Cage plays someone who has escaped from hell (yes, seriously) and is on the road to tracking down his infant granddaughter who is being held hostage by some devil worshipers. Throw in Amber Heard as some excellent eye candy and William Fichtner as some darkly comic relief and you have a comic book style action romp.You don't really need much of a brain to enjoy this, simply be in the mood for some mindless action (and be able to ignore the frequent - and not particularly good - use of CGI blue screens). I will go out on a limb - please don't hate me, ladies - and say that this is probably more of a film for the lads.Grab the beers, put the brain on hold and sit back to cheer for the goodies as they blast and drive their way through hordes of expendable devil nutters.A true grindhouse-like guilty pleasure of a film. It's no classic, but you weren't really expecting it to be, were you?

This rather 'thin' story follows John Milton as he escapes from hell in order to pursue a Satanic cult that killed his daughter and have kidnapped his granddaughter. Along the way, he meets Piper (Amber Heard) when he offers to assist her when her car breaks down (this is after she quit her job at the diner). However, Milton's task of getting to those that have kidnapped his granddaughter is far from straight forward when he finds himself being pursued by a mysterious man known only as 'The Accountant' who is portrayed by William Fitchner. Will Milton and Piper be able to get to Milton's granddaughter before the Satanic cult carry out their final 'act' against the child or will 'The Accountant' get to Milton and Piper first? There are many problems with Drive Angry and the first notable thing is the cartoonish/comic book violence. You'll see lots of baddies getting their hands blown off, heads blown off, people being shot and travelling about 20 feet across a room. It's fun once or twice, but it wears thin after awhile. I suspect that this type of cartoonish display of violence will seldom appeal to most adult audiences (which is ironic considering the film has been rated an '18').Another problem was the rather 'thin' story which does eventually connect things together, but without that much depth. We don't get much back story with Milton or his daughter which makes it difficult to make any sort of emotional connection to Milton. The character of The Accountant is very thinly written - he arrives without explanation, seems to have super human abilities, manages to turn a coin into an FBI badge by flicking it into the air - I'm sure if Dynamo; Magician Impossible or David Blaine did something like that people would says things like 'Wow! How did you do that'?, but no the police just say 'Oh you're FBI!' Give me a break!! Bizarrely, at times, I thought I was watching a really lame rip off of Terminator 2; Nic Cage as Arnie and William Fichtner as Robert Patrick. Cage is a bad ass at the start, delivering the dry dialogue complete with shades and a big gun - he even ends up with his left eye being damaged just like Arnie did in the first Terminator film. Fichtner arrives slightly later in the film, seemingly stronger and faster than Cage and more importantly indestructible. I'm unsure whether or not the writer's were meant to paying a bit of homage towards the Terminator franchise, but if they were, then it was a laughable attempt.Acting wise, Cage was rather wooden and monotone. He's a hit and miss actor in my book, but this is definitely an example of him being a 'miss'. Fichtner's performance was actually worse and his overacting was actually quite embarrassing. The daft part is that he's actually a reasonably good actor - anyone who's seen him in Prison Break will understand what I mean. He was just awful in this film - it just felt like he was trying too hard. Amber Heard does an OK job but again her character is quite badly written. That being said, her character will be most likely to make the biggest impact on people; Men will like her because she's gorgeous and is a girl that can look after herself. Women will probably also like her due to the fact that she's strong willed and won't allow herself to be pushed around. She's a good character, it's just a shame she wasn't given much depth. David Morse gives some credibility to proceedings, but he's not given enough screen time to make any sort of impact.Like me, I imagine that many people will have been scratching their heads for the majority of this film as nothing makes much sense with regards to their characters. It comes together in the end when we learn that both Milton and The Accountant were dead and that The Accountant pursued Milton merely to bring him back to Hell once he'd rescued his granddaughter. The problem with not revealing everything till the end is that your audience may find themselves detached from the film as they've got no understanding of why the characters are doing what they're doing and how they're doing what they're doing - that's the feeling that I got and when the film ended I thought to myself 'Oh now I understand, but do I really care?' This film is definitely not for everyone. The Max Payne stuff and cartoonish violence will divide audiences. I suspect that those in the younger demographic will love it. However, those that are maybe 30 and over will likely to find it to be 'overkill'. I don't mind this kind of stuff in moderation, but I can't help but wish that there was more substance to go with the rather impressive, albeit overdone style.

Although the two movies have almost zero in common other than the word in the title, Nicolas Cage's Drive Angry made me a lot less angry than Ryan Gosling's Drive. But, then, I have very little patience for extremely slow moving "disguised action" movies, such as the latter.Drive Angry absolutely wasn't anywhere near as bad as it should've been. Sure, I would've liked to see one or more Cage Outbursts he's known for and he had little to none here, and the obvious 3D effects stood out like a sore thumb in the 2D version I saw, but for the most part, I had fun.Mostly thanks to William Fichtner's The Account character. What was funny about him was that when he first showed up on screen, I rolled my eyes at the overexposure I've seen of him lately. Thankfully, my attitude changed 100% in two seconds of him on screen. He became as likable and funny as Tom Hiddleston's Loki from the Marvel Avenger films.From that moment – when he arrived very early in the movie, I waited each scene for The Accountant to pop up again. Not that the rest of the movie was just okay, he just lit up the screen and if you see his character, or Fichtner's portrayal, you will most likely agree.So we have an escaped con from down under and he's being chased down by The Accountant while he's chasing down his infant grandchild being held captive by a cult. Meanwhile, Piper, a blonde, is along for the ride. No real motivation for her being the film or the sidekick to the con played by Cage, but, maybe because, uh, she's a blonde.The action was fun, the lines okay and the direction straight, which I prefer in these types of sly action R-rated fair. Many times they try to overcomplicate films likes these and lose a lot of the target audience that would be attracted to it. Mercifully, they knew it was just a little higher-budget B-movie and never strayed.Not perfect, but a fun Saturday Night, stay-in flick.* * * Final thoughts: Every once in a while, the gang over at the hilarious How Did This Get Made podcast will throw me a curveball. Typically, actually, more accurately, 90% of the movies they cover for their show that they spend an hour or so ridiculing, are bad…REALLY bad. And while they do love to include Cage in all his outbursts, this movie, again, had little of those Cage moments that I've come to love. "OH, NO! NOT THE BEES! NOT THE BEES! AAAAAHHHHH! OH, THEY'RE IN MY EYES! MY EYES! AAAAHHHHH! AAAAAGGHHH!" anyone? Finally, the podcast did point out some funny moments and proved that, yeah, it is a B-movie, but I still had a blast here. If not just overall, Fichtner would be enough to sell me on this.