When trailers for Drive Angry 3D first started showing, it looked like it at least had a chance of being a decent homage to the grindhouse style of film that it was aiming for. If not this, than it also had the possibility of being a brainless action romp, which can also be entertaining sometimes. Sadly, it ends up failing pretty badly in both of these departments as it doesn’t even come close to being a grindhouse film or entertaining.
The film starts off by introducing us to Milton (Nicolas Cage), a man on a mission, but what mission, we don’t know at this point. We are also introduced to Piper (Amber Heard), a waitress who has just quit her job at a small coffee shop. The two of them become entwined when he asks for a ride and discovers her boyfriend beating her after she catches him cheating on her. The two of them hit the road together once again.
Along the way, pieces of Milton’s dark past begin to fall into place. A satanic cult killed his daughter some time ago, and now he’s back to get revenge and to rescue a baby that they’ve kidnapped in order to sacrifice. Meanwhile, a mysteriously devilish figure known only as The Accountant (William Fichtner) is hot on Milton’s trail for an extraordinarily unusual reason.
The opening scene of the film, one that is filled with over the top action, makes you think that you are going to be in for an over-the-top action film, but sadly, this is merely a tease, as the film immediately slows way down in order to introduce the flat characters and their bland situation. There is certainly more action later on in the film, but all of these scenes somehow end up being dull and unrealistic.
At one point, there is a car chase that feels like it lasts a good half-hour, but it’s done in such a generic fashion, that it merely becomes yawn-inducing instead of building up the excitement they were going for. If they wanted to make it exciting, they should have taken a page from Quentin Tarantino’s recent grindhouse homage, Death Proof, and tried to have more realistic stunts instead of random explosions and gunfire.
Then there’s the plot itself, which is one of the biggest drawbacks of the film. It tries to tie together some ludicrous story about a satanic cult and Cage coming back from Hell in order to take revenge, but there just wasn’t a whole lot they could do with a set up like that, and it shows. When you realize how dry the plot is, you realize how boring the film is, and when both your plot and action scenes are at the same level, you’re in for a long sit.
The climax continues the bland actions scenes by throwing together a frenzy of explosions, gunfire, and bad editing. At times, it becomes impossible to tell what exactly is happening, but you’ll find yourself not caring very much what with the undeveloped characters, inane writing, and bad story.
The best thing to come out of the film is a curiously interesting performance from Fichtner as the mysterious Accountant. He may not be a household name, but his few scenes become something to look forward to in an otherwise terrible film. The others (Cage, Heard, Billy Burke as the cult leader) try their best to make the lame material work, but it’s not nearly enough to help the film.
Drive Angry 3D was shot in 3D, so I was expecting it to be slightly more impressive than some other 3D films that I’ve seen, but strangely enough, about 5-10 minutes into the film, I stopped noticing the 3D all together, which is a lot sooner than that normally happens. So instead of an eye-popping bad movie, you merely get a bad movie that’s a lot darker than it otherwise should have been.
The film comes from director Patrick Lussier, whose projects are mostly direct-to-video, as well as some forgettable theatrical, horror films. Most of his experience is in editing, including this film, so he can be blamed directly for the blurred together action sequences. The film was written by Lussier and Todd Farmer. Looking through Farmer’s filmography, the most notable thing he’s done is Jason X, which is actually a good example of a good bad film, something that they tried to turn this into, but failed. In a way, these two are the perfect pair, and no, I don’t mean that in a good way. 1.5/4 stars.
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