Drive Angry 3D banner
A movie with this much promise, this much leeway, should not be this boring! What is being dubbed “Cagesploitation,” Drive Angry 3D falls in line with most of Nic Cage’s cinematic endeavors of the last decade or so. He shows up, he grimaces, he screams, and then he collects his check. I am a huge Cage apologist, and although I was unable to defend The Wicker Man remake, I am usually able to find at least a modicum of enjoyment from most of his films. Well, Drive Angry is not Wicker Man bad, but not nearly as genre bending envelope-pushing cinema that it claims to be. For a film called Drive Angry it really should have more driving. I am not joking, Cage is behind the wheel of a car for maybe 40% of the film, and I would hardly call him angry, closer to “concerned” or perhaps “focused.” Cage’s performance is oddly subdued, playing his escapee from Hell as a loving father instead of a man that busted through the burning bars of eternal damnation for deserved retribution. The film’s “big-bad” is a modern-day witch lazily performed by Billy Burke who I recognized from a so-so episode of Monk, seems like a poor-man’s Michael C. Hall. Amber Heard is gorgeous, and actually looks like she is having some fun. Not surprisingly William Fichtner steals every scene he is in. I love this guy, like J.K. Simmons and Jeffrey Wright, he should just be in every movie ever made – ever.
William Fichtner in Drive Angry 3D
The action is pretty exciting, the dialogue is campy, and the plot is impressively ridiculous. I loved the David Morse cameo, and the 3D was serviceable, but completely unnecessary. This is a fun flick, mostly for the right reasons, but not the balls out no-nonsense/all-nonsense B-movie spectacle I had hoped.