philosoraptor42

Drive Angry (2011)

Nicolas Cage goes nuts chasing down the man who killed his daughter and kidnapped his granddaughter. Cage is actually dead himself but he's broken out of hell in order to take revenge.

Meanwhile he is being tracked down by a figure who calls himself 'the accountant' played by William Fichtner. The accountant seems to hold all people in contempt, he has some kind of superpowers due to his supernatural nature and he is able to remain impeccably dressed no matter what happens.

So far so cool, right? Nic Cage in full crazy mode on the run from the devil to take revenge on an evil cult leader. Sounds awesome.

Sadly, I found this plodded along. I'd note that Amber Heard barely gets given a proper character, but to be frank nobody really gets much of a personality here.

I realised that things were going seriously downhill when we have a fight scene where Nic Cage's character is fighting off a whole bunch of gunmen while having sex. The scene plays as crass and cringe-worthy as it sounds (and if it doesn't sound crass and cringe-worthy you're imagining it wrong).

Fichtner's performance is brilliant and I loved the special effects work that was done to show him as completely invulnerable and utterly ruthless. In my opinion this could have been a much better movie if it was just about Nic Cage's character running away from 'the accountant'. The cult leader was inevitably pretty unimpressive by comparison. (Billy Burke, you may be the only person who managed to come off consistently awesome during the Twilight franchise, and the way you managed to give the impression that your character had chemistry with block-of-wood Kristen Stewart was miraculous. However, here you were clearly being too subtle because you didn't come across as anything like menacing enough.)

The plot seriously loses its way pretty quickly and without a decent sense of direction it was even harder to stay invested in the action. By the time we reached the final scenes I had a tough time caring about anything that happened.

I was told that "Drive Angry" was silly fun and that was all I was really expecting. In one Youtube review I saw little clips of Fichtner looking badass and I was REALLY hoping for something as entertaining as Milla Jovovich's "Ultraviolet". Sadly it was not to be. Not even as a guilty pleasure.

E+