{"id":2395,"date":"2011-02-26T16:15:06","date_gmt":"2011-02-26T21:15:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=2395"},"modified":"2015-01-04T13:22:38","modified_gmt":"2015-01-04T18:22:38","slug":"film-drive-angry-3d-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=2395","title":{"rendered":"Film: Drive Angry 3D (2011)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Return to: <\/strong>Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> \/ <\/em>D<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Film: Excellent<\/span><\/p>\n

Label: EOne \/ Region: 1 (NTSC) \/\u00a0Released: May 31, 2011<\/span><\/p>\n

Genre: Supernatural Horror \/ 3D<\/span><\/p>\n

Synopsis: A felon escapes from Satan’s prison to save his infant graddaughter from a cult.<\/span><\/p>\n

Special Features: n\/a<\/span><\/p>\n

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Review:<\/p>\n

After working his way through various franchise sequels and the recent flat-headed remake of My Bloody Valentine 3D<\/strong> (2009), director Patrick Lussier finally hit creative paydirt with this perfectly crafted exploitation hybrid that Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez tried to evoke in their Grindhouse diptych but missed by several miles.<\/p>\n

Drive Angry<\/strong> isn\u2019t pure grindhouse \u2013 it has a coherent plot with a coherent resolution \u2013 but it delivers everything the teasing poster advertizes: cars, sex, and the promise of violence and socially inappropriate behavior.<\/p>\n

Nicolas Cage plays Milton, a baddie who busted out of Hell, and determined to hunt down the human monster – Jonah King (Billy Burke), leader of a niche cult – responsible for killing his daughter, and plotting to sacrifice Milton\u2019s infant granddaughter to Satan so Hell can reign on Earth.<\/p>\n

The beauty of the evil cult is that even Satan thinks they\u2019re morons, which makes the learning curve of his minion, The Accountant (William Fichtner), all the more entertaining. He\u2019s a bean counter sent to bring back the escapee, but once he comprehends the reasons for Milton\u2019s breakout, he\u2019s amused by the presumptions humans have made about getting on the Devil\u2019s good side.<\/p>\n

Milton\u2019s revenge take some time because he has to gradually cull Jonah\u2019s entourage into something more manageable, so he sets a few traps, and finds a great ally in sexy Piper (All the Boys Love Mandy Lane<\/strong>\u2019s Amber Heard), a leggy and long-haired sexploitation babe capable of shooting moving targets, driving hot cars, and beating the crap out of manhandlers because of her able experiences with sleazy fianc\u00e9e Frank (played by co-writer Todd Farmer) and her groping boss at a local diner.<\/p>\n

Milton knows the Accountant is able to regenerate wounds, so he\u2019s packing a God-killer \u2013 an antique multi-barreled shotgun with bullets that permanently kill targets, leaving no chance of an afterlife in Heaven or Hell. He also likes vintage muscle cars, so audiences are treated to the sweet chrome and rumbling engines of a Buick Riviera<\/a>, Dodge Charger<\/a>, and Chevy Chevelle<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A brilliant shot with dead accuracy, Milton can also massacre scummy henchmen in a hotel room while remaining interconnected with a naked waitress named Candy (Charlotte Ross) and taking puffs from a cigar, and swigs from liquor. He\u2019s just that good.<\/p>\n

Cage manages to keep Milton sympathetic real in spite of the character being an amalgam of comic book and B-movie archetypes, and Heard is physically striking and<\/em> deadly – never letting anyone victimize her without a hard punch to the jaw. The two actors also manage to transcend some of the film\u2019s deliberately (and maybe unintentionally) cheesy dialogue, with Cage pulling off a backstory scene with believable gravitas \u2013 a feat few actors could\u2019ve managed while still giving audiences a subtle wink from the one eye Jonah didn\u2019t blow into Jell-O.<\/p>\n

Lussier and his casting director seem to have raided a lengthy hit list of veteran B-actors and stuntmen \/ bit actors whose faces are recognizable from playing drug dealers, corrupt cops, henchmen, and sickos. Headlining the troupe is small-town sheriff Cap, played by Tom Akins (The Fog<\/strong>), with Jack McGee playing Piper\u2019s hands-on boss, the always underused Pruitt Taylor Vince (Identity<\/strong>) as a peeler bar owner, and David Morse as Milton\u2019s old friend from the pre-Hell years.<\/p>\n

With rare exceptions, the cars are real, the stunts involve humans, and the locations convey an appropriately sun-bleached southern U.S., and Michael Wandmacher\u2019s bluegrass score adds extra colour and feral nastiness with acoustic and electronic instruments.<\/p>\n

Unlike Bloody Valentine<\/strong>, which had uniformly weak visuals (and looked like a cheap HD production), Drive Angry<\/strong> is beautifully filmed with an ideal blend of cleanly rendered 3D effects and simple compositional elements, much in the way Alfred Hitchcock saved the money shots for in-your-face assaults in Dial M for Murder <\/strong>(1954), but generally kept scenes simple so audiences felt they were sitting at the edge of the room.<\/p>\n

The gore effects are a good mix of practical and digital, and highlights include the aforementioned eye-trauma enjoyed by Milton, blown away appendages, and a brief tribute to Tom Savini\u2019s famous machete-in-the face moment in Dawn of the Dead<\/a><\/strong> (1978).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a uniformly solid package for exploitation fans wanting retro thrills and titillation, and the only issue is the lack of longer shots of cars, and engine sounds with subwoofer throttling bass. Little details, but precious ones.<\/p>\n

This is by far Lussier\u2019s best film, but there is one oddity that perhaps only co-writer Todd Farmer can explain: alongside Bloody Valentine<\/strong>, this is the second film in which he\u2019s cast himself as a redneck scumbag who appears naked, treats women like crap, and dies painfully. If this is a motif or personal fetish, one wonders whether he\u2019ll work in similar cameos in Halloween III<\/strong> and Hellraiser<\/strong>, the next set of films in the works with Lussier.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2011 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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Related links:<\/em><\/p>\n

Interview: \u00a0composer Michael Wandmacher (2011)<\/p>\n

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Related external links (MAIN SITE):<\/em><\/p>\n

DVD \/ Film: \u00a0All the Boys Love Mandy Lane<\/a> <\/strong>(2006) <\/strong>—\u00a0Dawn of the Dead<\/a><\/strong> <\/strong>(1978) — <\/strong>Dial M for Murder<\/a> <\/strong>(1954) — <\/strong>The Fog<\/a> <\/strong>(1980) — My Bloody Valentine 3D<\/a><\/strong> <\/strong>(2009)<\/p>\n

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External References<\/em>:<\/p>\n

IMDB <\/a>— Soundtrack Album<\/a> — Composer Filmography<\/a><\/p>\n

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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> <\/em><\/em><\/em>\/\u00a0D<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return to: Home \/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews \/ D . Film: Excellent Label: EOne \/ Region: 1 (NTSC) \/\u00a0Released: May 31, 2011 Genre: Supernatural Horror \/ 3D Synopsis: A felon escapes from Satan’s prison to save his infant graddaughter from a cult. Special Features: n\/a \u00a0 . Review: After working his way through various franchise […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[21,318,57,319,320],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-CD","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2395"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2395"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10405,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2395\/revisions\/10405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}