2011 3D mayhem!Rating: 6/20
Plot: John Milton (oh, geez) is angry as he drives in search of some devil worshippers who killed his daughter and are about to sacrifice his granddaughter. Oh, and he escaped from Hell. That might be a spoiler. Sorry about that. Milton meets a waitress, kills her fiance with an air conditioner, and takes her along on the trip. Meanwhile, a mysterious man known as The Accountant pursues Milton while he pursues the devil worshippers. Cue "Yakety Sax"!
There's a muffin reference in this one.
This movie assaulted me--throwing slow-motion bullets, coins, flying cars, baseball bats, severed fingers, pieces of glass, blood, and whatever else its makers could find into my living room. Because you see, just having all hell breaking lose is fine, but it's really nothing compared to having all hell break lose in 3D! I mean, did I enjoy watching William Fichtner of Prison Break walking toward me? Sure, but when I imagine what I missed by not seeing him walk toward me in 3D, it makes me. . .well, angry. And then it makes me want to drive. Angry. By the way, should I penalize this movie for having a grammar error in the title? It should be Drive Angrily. This is the type of movie that doesn't care about that though, the type that if you tried to correct its grammar would get all in your grill and say, "What are you? A fucking English teacher or something?" It's also the type of movie that would probably pick fights with other movies. "You think you're bad ass or something, Real Steel? Watch me throw a car over the side of this bridge! Woooooooooo!" I swear to God that I'm not making this up, but Drive Angry actually threw a punch at me while I was watching. Luckily, I had just bent down to grab an ink pen that I had dropped, and the punch didn't connect. It would have hurt, too, because Drive Angry's fist was all on fire and made of iron. My whole face would have probably exploded! Just the soundtrack of this movie could probably kick your ass. "Raise a Little Hell," a classic played during an opening scene where Nicolas Cage's character shoots a guy's hand off (right into your lap thanks to 3D technology) while things explode and "Fuck the Pain Away," another aggressive song that's played minutes before a scene where a guy punches a naked woman. I need to buy the soundtrack because it would be perfect for times when I need to drive angrily. Or as William Fichtner describes Nicolas Cage: "Angry with attitude." Fichtner's easily the best thing about this movie, by the way. His character doesn't make a lot of sense, but he's kind of cool, and Fichtner understands that he's playing a comic character. The guy who plays the leader of the Satan worshippers (Billy Burke, apparently taking a break from those teenage vampire movies) is really awful. He's got an unidentifiable accent and looks like he's auditioning for a David Copperfield biopic or something. And our hero, Nicolas Cage? Well, this isn't his best performance, and I'm surprised his skull wasn't on fire in this movie. For the most part, he looks exactly like he does on the poster up there--angry. I did like his aggressive-kiss-coffee-drink move though, and there's a great scene in a hotel room where he simultaneously smokes a cigar, drinks whiskey from the bottle, has sexual intercourse, and kills a bunch of Satan worshippers who are attacking him with garden utensils. In case I wasn't clear--that's all happening at the same time. I imagine it's pretty close to Nicolas Cage's honeymoon actually.
My favorite Cage line: "It's still in there. The bullet. I can feel it."
Back to the 3D thing. The ways the makers of Drive Angry try to take advantage of the technology is laughable. The CGI in this movie is some of the worst I have ever seen, and I wonder if it wouldn't look as bad in a theater with the 3D glasses. It wouldn't have come close to saving this movie though. But the next time I have an opportunity to see a Nicolas Cage movie in 3D, I'm watching it with aviator goggles.
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