Drive Angry 3D (2011) [Blu-ray 3D]
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close  Drive Angry 3D (2011) [Blu-ray 3D]
Rated:  R 
Starring: Nicolas Cage, William Fichtner, David Morse, Jack McGee, Christa Campbell, Amber Heard, Katy Mixon, Charlotte Ross, Billy Burke, Todd Farmer, Tom Atkins.
Director: Patrick Lussier
Genre: Action | Crime | Fantasy
DVD Release Date: 05/31/2011

***PLEASE NOTE: A Blu-ray 3D disc is only compatible with 3D Blu-ray players.***
Tagline: Hell is already walking the earth.

In the high-octane, action-adventure Drive Angry, Nicolas Cage stars as Milton, an undead felon who breaks out of hell to avenge his murdered daughter and rescue her kidnapped baby from a band of cult-worshipping savages. Joined by tough-as-nails Piper (Amber Heard), the two set off on a rampage of redemption, all while being pursued by an enigmatic killer (William Fichtner) who has been sent by the Devil to retrieve Milton and deliver him back to hell.

Storyline: John Milton is up against the clock: Jonah King, the leader of a Satanic cult, has murdered Milton's daughter and kidnapped her baby. In three days, King and his followers will sacrifice the child at midnight. Milton picks up the trail in Oklahoma as well as rescuing a waitress named Piper from her brutal, two-timing fiancé. There are odd things about Milton: his driver's license is out of date, he has a very strange gun, and he's being pursued by a man in a suit who carries FBI ID and calls himself the Accountant. Piper, who's lived a life on the sidelines, has to piece things together on the fly as they close in on King. Written by

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Martin Liebman on June 5, 2011 -- Hell is already walking the earth.

Hurry up and call Tarantino; somebody stole a script he wrote back when he was 13. Drive Angry has all the makings of some Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez Grindhouse movie, except that it's a failure instead of a success. It's not an epic failure, though, just a regular old woulda-could-shoulda been better fail, feeling like the kind of thing Tarantino wrote as a teenager, a movie with all the makings of something better but just not quite fleshed out to the point of respectability or, as cinephiles have come to expect from the video store clerk-turned Hollywood sensation, greatness. Drive Angry, a hard-R action rampage with sex, boobs, and booze aplenty thrown in for good measure, has its moments and more or less works as a slice of raw off-the-bone entertainment. It wants to be a sizzling-hot fresh off-the-grill mouthwatering delight, but Director Patrick Lussier, whose most notable work is the competent but forgettable 3D Remake/Chiller My Bloody Valentine, winds up only playing copycat with his movie, taking elements of superior throwback genre pictures and winding up with Ghost Rider on steroids rather than the second coming of Death Proof.

The recently-deceased Milton (Nicolas Cage, National Treasure) has just burst free from hell and is back on Earth and ready to kill in the name of avenging his murdered daughter and saving the life of his newborn granddaughter who has been kidnapped and is being prepared to be sacrificed under the light of the full moon. Her captors are members of a satanic Louisiana cult led by the despicable Jonah King (Billy Burke) who believes that the infant's death will usher in a new era of evil terror across the world. While hot on the cult's trail, Milton rescues a young waitress by the name of Piper (Amber Heard, The Stepfather) from her abusive boyfriend. As she bears witness to horrific acts of violence and comes to understand both Milton's quest for justice and his unique ability to withstand physical violence, she slowly but surely accepts him and comes to his aid in the fight to save the baby. Meanwhile, Milton is tracked by a mysterious agent of hell known only as "The Accountant" (William Fichtner, Black Hawk Down).

Yes, Drive Angry is a disappointment, but it's the kind of movie that most probably don't count on for anything other than a good time at the movies. It delivers on that basic need well enough; genre fans will get a kick out of it, enjoying the fast cars, hot women, gruesome violence, cheap thrills, and the sleazy tone that all but guarantees no morality or thematic undercurrents, the picture emphasizing fast driving and butt-kicking while removing most everything else from the equation. Even the plot doesn't really matter; it's not at all interesting, serving instead as a means to get a skimpily-dressed Amber Heard into the same car as the bulletproof and bleached Nicolas Cage so they may go about their business of steaming up the screen with an air of sexy and all the violence and noise that genre fans can handle. The disappointment comes in that it just feels so darn repetitive. Sure the movie isn't one that was ever going to forever alter the landscape of trashy violent cinema, but between Nicolas Cage turning in his usual effective but half-dozing performance and the sheer unoriginality of the stunts, the movie just never seems primed to explode beyond the fireballs that light up the screen every now and then. Throw in some goofy hellish supernatural angle and a weirdo cult and the end result is just a more violent, but admittedly somewhat superior, combination of two Nicholas Cage flops, the aforementioned Ghost Rider and the abysmal so-bad-its-funny The Wicker Man.

Where the film also fails is in its copycatting of a style that's just too difficult to get right without the proper touch. Drive Angry so desperately wants to be the next hip and cool wonder of cinema, but just try and listen to the opening monologue without either thinking immediately of Quentin Tarantino or cringing at the failed attempt to replicate the witty-sharp dialogue he's so gifted with the ability to write. That it evokes Tarantino might be a plus, a sign that it's at least headed in the right direction, but to use a metaphor that relates to the movie, where Tarantino would have the slick and roaring Charger's pedal-to-the-metal, Drive Angry sputters along like the jalopy from Uncle Buck. Sure both serve the same basic purpose and with the same general method, but one is a whole lot better, more efficient, and far sexier than the other. Such is the thin line that separates this vapid wannabe from other, better movies. Also on the wrong side of the line is the inclusion of a here-superfluous 3D presentation that only seems to cheapen the experience rather than enhance it. The saving grace, aside from enjoying a merely passable Action movie experience, is William Fichtner. The veteran character actor plays his bad guy part with an intoxicating and playful deviousness, the performance accentuating good comedic timing and the actor showcasing a commanding presence that fits in very well with the film's over-the-top antics. Unfortunately, Nicolas Cage can't match Fichtner's mastery of the film's tone, the fan-favorite actor plodding through the movie as droopy and uninterested as ever.

Drive Angry is one of those wishy-washy eh, could have been better, could have been worse movies. It's fine for what it is, but at the same time it feels terribly unimaginative. The plot isn't worth the paper it's written on, serving only as a means to an end to get the movie from one action scene to the next. Even with the premise of a baby on the brink of being sacrificed, there's no heart, no emotion, just an admittedly fun but very choppy ride down the same old Action movie highway, except here Drive Angry attempts to detour down Tarantino Parkway but crashes and burns instead of capturing that same kind of magic. Summit Entertainment's Blu-ray 3D release of Drive Angry yields a fairly strong 1080p 3D transfer, an Action movie-typical lossless soundtrack, and an average array of extras. Worth a rental and maybe a buy should fans of these sorts of movies find it on a good sale.

Trivia:
  • The Latin inscribed on the god-killer's bullet reads DUES VELOX NEX, which loosely translated means "God's swift violent death"
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[CSW] -3- I rented the 2D version on 06/29/2011 to see if I wanted to purchase the 3D version - I did. The user comments above say it all. This is definitely a guilty pleasure and shouldn't be missed by anyone who enjoyed the old 70's revenge movies as much as I did.
Cast Notes: Nicolas Cage (Milton), Amber Heard (Piper), William Fichtner (The Accountant), Billy Burke (Jonah King), David Morse (Webster), Todd Farmer (Frank), Christa Campbell (Mona), Charlotte Ross (Candy), Tom Atkins (Cap), Jack McGee (Fat Lou), Katy Mixon (Norma Jean), Wanetah Walmsley (American Indian Mother), Robin McGee (Guy with Camera Phone), Fabian C. Moreno (Latino Busboy), Edrick Browne (Rookie).

IMDb Rating (06/27/11): 5.6/10 from 18,089 users

Additional information
Copyright:  2011,  Summit Entertainment
Features:  • Access: Drive Angry - Get the ultimate insider's look at Drive Angry
• Audio Commentary with Filmmakers Patrick Lussier and Todd Farmer
• Deleted Scenes with Filmmaker Commentary
Subtitles:  English
Video:  Widescreen 1.78:1 Color
Screen Resolution: 1080p
Audio:  ENGLISH: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
SPANISH: Dolby Digital 5.1
Time:  1:45
DVD:  # Discs: 2 -- # Shows: 1
UPC:  025192103018
Coding:  [V5.0-A4.5] MPEG-4 AVC
D-Box:  Yes
3-D:  3-D 7/10 - Shot natively in 3D with good depth most of the time and some over-the-top forced 3D content that just seem to be trying too hard. The score is a little lower because this movie doesn't really "benefit" from 3D as much as some others do.
Other:  Blu-ray 3D and Blu-ray 2D Only
Producers: Michael De Luca; Directors: Patrick Lussier; Writers: Patrick Lussier, Todd Farmer; running time of 105 minutes; Packaging: HD Case.
Rated R for strong brutal violence throughout, grisly images, some graphic sexual content, nudity and pervasive language.
There are supposed to be DBox motion codes for this title but they could not be found for the 2D or the 3D Blu-ray version for this edition - DBox intelligent vibration alone added greatly to this movie.

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