Thanks to everybody that made it to our screening of Drive Angry, featuring none other than Wasted Cinema's acting idol, Nic Cage. In case you missed it, it was a great night where we raised a bunch of money for Occupy Sandy relief efforts -- in part by raffling off this signed, topless photo.
Drive Angry is the tale of Milton (Nic Cage) following the death of his daughter at the hands of cult leader Jonah King. After Milton finds out about his daughter's death he is extremely, believe it or not, ANGRY, so he breaks out of Hell to get his revenge. Could he maybe have just brought his daughter out of Hell with him and then save everybody some trouble and be happy? After all, she was worshipping Satan so we can probably assume she wound up in Hell too. In any case, the writer's wanted to show us a different story.
Drive Angry seems to be about half based on plot and half based on gimmicky 3D effects. We certainly enjoyed them as toastworthy moments, but the 3D gags clearly took budget away from some of the other key moments in the film (ahem, see Jonah King below). Of course, our favorite moment had nothing to do with special effects, but had everything to do with Nic's outlandish bad-assery and his refusal to disrobe during the gunfight/sex scene.
 Nic Cage + 3D + sexy gun & axe fight = Good effects. |  Jonah King = Bad effects. |
The character of Milton was ostensibly named after John Milton, the author of Paradise Lost, which recounts the story Satan's travels from Hell to bring chaos to Adam and Eve on Earth. That story may be vaguely similar to Drive Angry, but it is hard to ignore certain other obvious parallels between Milton and Milton Waddams from Office Space. Both characters have something precious taken away from them, freak out in a rage, and leave behind them a fiery inferno. Whether Drive Angry was, in fact, based on Office Space, we cannot say for certain. It is just one of many philosophical questions we took home with us from the bar.
 Drive Angry Milton's rage |  Office Space Milton's rage |
For as good as Nic Cage's acting was in Drive Angry (ie, not very), it was really the stories of some of the supporting characters that we found most interesting. Take his sidekick Piper (Amber Heard, *whistle*) for example. Before Milton came along, she was happily working as a diner waitress to support her deadbeat husband Stone Cold Steve Austin. Sure, her plan of withholding sex to get a marriage proposal backfired but otherwise she seemed to have it together. Then along comes Milton and all of a sudden she is "with him 'til the end," shooting cops and adopting babies, because... well, because, um, he's charming?? Seriously, we get THAT, but come on girl you can have a rebound for a little bit less drama.
And then what is with this Accountant guy? He definitely lends some street cred to accountants the world over, but what makes him tick exactly? Granted, Milton is running around killing people ahead of schedule and generally mucking up his accounts, that's gotta be frustrating. But the Accountant seems a little bit out of control himself. And what about his Two-Face-esque coin? Two-Face is a psycho obsessed with random chance, but the Accountant should be exact and precise... and WHY do the cops get so easily distracted by a quarter? If you were a cop about to shoot a suspected dangerous criminal and you yelled "Freeze!" and he was all like, watch this coin I just threw into the air, would you (a) watch the quarter with your mouth agape or (b) fire because of sudden movement? Clearly this film chooses (a).
OMG a flipping coin!
Overall, with Drive Angry we get lots of action, explosions, tons of nifty 3D shots and almost zero emotion shown from Nic Cage. On the plus side, he does get shot in the eye, which it turns out what he really wanted along. So if he's happy, we're happy.
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