DRIVE ANGRY

John Milton has escaped from hell to avenge his daughter, killed by a satanic cult, and to rescue his newborn granddaughter, kidnapped by Jonha King, the cult leader, who intends to sacrifice her to the devil during the next full moon night. John has three days to find King and save the child, and during his race against time, he encounters Piper, a diner waitress, who gives him a ride and helps him in his mission. Meanwhile, a strange man in a suit and tie calling himself the Accountant is on John's trail, while the police try to make sense of the trail of deaths that John and Piper are leaving behind. Cinema is founded on an eternal return of ideas, atmospheres, characters, and titles. If we greeted the new millennium with a genre cinema that revisited themes and re-proposed titles from the 1970s and 1990s, now, ten years later, we are gradually finding ourselves in a physiological shift towards the next decade, the 1980s. To demonstrate that the theory of the French chemist Lavoisier applies to every field, we note that in genre cinema nothing is created and nothing is destroyed, but everything transforms. Stallone started with his Expendables to successfully revisit 1980s macho cinema with the right adjustment to the tastes of new generations, then Aja followed by remaking 'Piranha' with breasts, butts, and blood, Rodriguez added his own with 'Machete,' and now Lussier is adding to the dose of hot machismo with 'Drive Angry,' a thriller/horror with a substantial action component that plays with clichés to create a film as tacky and wild as few others. 'Drive Angry' seems to have come straight from an eighties drive-in schedule or one of those grindhouse theaters that Tarantino made us discover, a silly and exaggerated film but so aware of being so that it is by force of things charming. Nicholas Cage lends his face and body to the very angry John Milton, nomen omen of a man who escapes from hell where he was locked up after a life of crimes and misdeeds to recover what little good he has left on Earth. The reference to 'Paradise Lost' is the only point of contact — somewhat gratuitous, if we want — to high culture; otherwise, Patrick Lussier and Todd Farmer have really strained themselves to the limit to throw into 'Drive Angry' as much crass and testosterone-filled material as one can imagine, assembling a potentially cult scene carousel incredibly substantial. Imagine the great Nicholas Cage slaughtering armed hicks while having sex with a blonde, a very long shootout reminiscent of a scene from 'Desperado' and 'Shoot 'em Up' but decidedly more boisterous and exaggerated. Or imagine the beautiful Amber Heard in jean shorts returning home to her boyfriend and finding him in bed with a silicone-enhanced bombshell, and between the two begins a catfight with the completely naked lover who takes punches in the face on the street while a fat guy with a amused look from the sidewalk films it with his cell phone. These are just two of the most exploitation-filled scenes to which you can add a practically indefinite number of others of the same line that make massive use of gratuitous violence, splatter, explosions, car chases, shootouts, and Tom Atkins, the police chief, who urges his men to shoot the tires, with the awareness that shooting the tires means shooting the head. This is Cinema, baby, proud B-movie Cinema! Lussier, for his part, had honed the machinery with 'My Bloody Valentine,' a remake of an 1980s slasher that already showed the potential of pure exploitation cinema; with 'Drive Angry,' we go further, we just have fun and that's fine. The cast of well-known faces is practically perfect. Cage is here dealing with one of those unlikely tough guy roles in which he frankly doesn't need to give his best but just make gruff faces, shoot with divine pistols, and monolithically say 'get laid' at the right moment. Amber Heard ('The Ward - The Department') confirms herself as a malleable actress and capable of holding the scene even alone, discovering here also an excellent action woman. Hilariously funny is the Accountant of William Fichtner ('Crash - Physical Contact'), a charismatic satanic figure, a true jewel in the crown of a truly crazy film. Let's not forget that 'Drive Angry' is in 3D... shot in 3D, as the distribution is keen to point out! Therefore, native stereoscopy and not post-production conversion. In the end, it doesn't matter much, the third dimension is an accessory without which the film can be enjoyed with the same effect. Lussier has leaned on the depth effect now characteristic of all Digital 3D films and has minimized the carnival tricks with objects that pop out of the screen. A few bullets, car carcasses, and a tomahawk make the viewer close their eyes for a moment, but the game is frankly not worth the candle. Many will prefer this way, but to remain consistent with the operation, emphasizing the amusement park effect seemed appropriate. 'Drive Angry' is a piece of crap, there's no getting around it, but it entertains with gusto and sincerity, bringing to mind those ingenuous B-movies that surely represented a forbidden cult object for many of us. If only we had more...