Susan Granger’s review of “Drive Angry” (Summit Entertainment)
Add this as another contribution to the vengeance genre, centering on a hard, bitter, tormented man, burdened by hatred and intent on revenge.
John Milton (Nicolas Cage) is a murderer, escaped not only from jail but also from Hell. Perhaps because he deserted his only daughter when she was a teenager, he’s distraught that she joined a Satanic cult and was brutally killed by its leader, Jonah King (Billy Burke, a.k.a.: Bella’s dad in the “Twilight” franchise), who kidnapped her baby girl – Milton’s granddaughter – whom he plans to ritually sacrifice at the next full moon.
That gives Milton a short timeline to track him down while being pursued not only by the cultists and the cops but also by a wry, dapper, unflappable mystery-man calling himself The Accountant (William Fichtner), who is perplexed how Milton escaped and determined to return him to his rightful place among the dead. Amid the carnage, Milton teams up with a feisty waitress, Piper (Amber Heard), driving her fiancé’s souped-up ’69 Dodge Charger with the license plate DRV ANGRY.
As he ricochets between inspired, offbeat performances and abominable action flicks like “The Season of the Witch,” in order to attempt to understand Cage’s choice of roles – aside from his fervent desire for a hefty paycheck – one has to remember that he took the name Cage from a comic book; his real name is Coppola (nephew of Francis Ford). He named his son Kal-El, which was Superman’s birth name on Krypton, and has often said that considers comic-book movies “the purest form of entertainment, giving spectacle and intensity.” So it’s not surprising that this characterization harks back to “Ghost Rider” and “Grindhouse,” among others.
Written by Todd Farmer and director Patrick Lussier, it’s a trashy throw-back to the atrociously absurd B-features shown at drive-in movies, except now there’s more graphic violence, explicitly sexual, fetishistic, full-frontal female nudity and unnecessary 3-D.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Drive Angry” is a devilishly sleazy 6. And coming up, there’s “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance.”
