Drive Angry
Two stars out of four
Rated: 18A
Drive Angry is a movie that should STFU — and by that I mean, “Stop Talking Fellows, Understand?”
It’s a supernatural road thriller starring Nicolas Cage, sizzling celluloid of a type normally relegated to drive-ins, grindhouses and other down-market retreats where the popcorn is served with buckets o’ blood.
You know, the kind featuring car chases, gun battles, gratuitous sex and the aforementioned blood, with a satanic vendetta or two thrown in for variety.
Such films are not, God forbid, supposed to be showcases of snappy dialogue, especially when the dialogue snaps like a worn rubber band. When in doubt, say nothing and just cock your gun.
Drive Angry’s director Patrick Lussier (Dracula 2000) can’t seem to resist including every one of the macho mutterings he and co-writer Todd Farmer scribbled into their notebooks, cackling maniacally all the while.
Thus a movie that could have left skid marks on our psyche — in 3-D no less — instead drives us to distraction with verbose line readings that kill momentum worse than a police flashlight shining through a parked windshield.
Each and every tortured soul in this Satan Get Your Gun farce feels compelled to explain to every other tortured soul what terrible thing is about to happen. Such as when devil’s cult leader Jonah King (Billy Burke) informs his prey, “I’m gonna kill you and I’m gonna defile your corpse.”
One of the few scenes where people aren’t jabbering away is a shootout that occurs while Cage and a roadhouse floozie are making the beast with two backs, as Shakespeare would say. And the scene is a complete rip of a funnier and sexier moment between Clive Owen and Monica Bellucci in Shoot ’Em Up, a film much smarter than this one.
The failure of people to STFU in Drive Angry is compounded by Cage phoning in yet another performance, as he continues to make us forget he ever won an Oscar. He managed to rouse himself to manic fury for Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call — New Orleans; can’t he at least pretend he’s peeved for Drive Angry?
At least this time he actually is on the road to hell, or rather out of it. He’s John Milton, an escapee from Hades who seems remarkably calm for someone just sprung from eternal damnation. How he busted out of the Big Smoke is anybody’s guess, but he’s taken with him a blunderbuss called the God Killer, which looks like something Elmer Fudd created.
Milton is on a quest to find his baby granddaughter, who was abducted by King after the cultist killed Milton’s daughter. King and his followers believe the baby is “the messiah of the next age,” one ruled by Satan, and here I was thinking all along it was Justin Bieber.
Amber Heard plays the requisite eye candy as a feisty waitress who tags along for the not-so-furious ride. She provides the wheels, a 1969 Dodge Charger with the licence plate “DRVAGRY.” Of course.
Did I mention the film is in 3-D? Not that it matters.
The only thing that keeps Drive Angry from being completely derivative road stew is William Fichtner’s hilariously deadpan portrayal of The Accountant, Satan’s right-hand man, the guy who collects stray infidels. He’s the funniest satanic figure since Mr. Skin in Bruce McDonald’s Highway 61, and that was 20 years ago.
The Accountant also talks too much, but at least tells us funny stuff, such as how Satan is well-read and really not that big a fan of nut jobs like Jonah King. But Ol’ Nick does want the aptly named God Killer back, and also insists that Milton return to his sizzling prison.
The Accountant deserves his own franchise, one that hopefully would have a co-star more involved than Cage . . . and would also STFU.
Peter Howell is a syndicated Toronto Star movie critic.