Drive Angry ★★★
NICK Cage has had a good 2018.
He’s still pumping out the B-Grade, straight-to-video revenge thrillers with monotonous regularity.
But his performances in Mom and Dad and Mandy have also given us a taste of the exciting presence of old.
Despite the generally lean years of the 2000s, he has given us a couple of gems, including Drive Angry back in 2011.
This action/horror/sci-fi mash-up jumped on the resurgent 3D bandwagon of that time and consequently retained these cheesy effects for home viewing on blu-ray.
Cage plays…actually I’m not sure what he plays.
It starts with his character, Milton, pursuing and violently despatching a group of bad dudes on a stretch of highway.
He’s looking for somebody whose been kidnapped. He finds out the general area but needs a new set of wheels.
Rather than stealing them he hitches a ride with a sassy diner waitress, Piper, played by Amber Heard, who has just quit her job and come home to find her fiancé in bed with another woman.
After Piper punches out the woman, Milton also gives her cheating partner a hiding and then they’re off.
Why Piper has no qualms in helping Milton go up against a gang of sadistic satanists is just one of the many unexplained threads of the events that unfold.
Things get even wierder when Milton seems to be immortal and may even be some kind of fallen Devil’s disciple himself.
Amber Heard, best known as the former Mrs Johnny Depp, is surprisingly good as Amber, perhaps because she makes relatively few films and doesn’t always choose the right role for her.
Throw in William Fichtner as the mysterious, immaculately dressed ‘Accountant’ pursuing Milton and Billy Burke as cult leader Jonah and you have a trio of crazies to keep you entertained.
it’s all ridiculously over-the-top and, by the climax has mostly become laughable, but remains bizarrely watchable.
Drive Angry was the fourth film directed and co-written by Frenchman Patrick Lussier, but didn’t do well enough to give him better vehicles.
It remains an oddity, but a decent one.