Saturday, April 21, 2012

In the Grindhouse tradition... Drive Angry


"Since the birth of time, humanity has endeavored to restrain evil men in prisons. But since Cain fled the murder of his brother, evil men have fled the walls of punishment. So, it doesn't matter if you're a bad-ass motherfucker on the run, because you think you're better than everyone else, and somehow entitled to do what you gotta do. No. Because you see bad-ass motherfuckers are never fast enough. In the end, they will all be accounted for."
The Accountant

Drive Angry written by Todd Farmer and Patrick Lussierwas the follow up to their My Bloody Valentine remake, and bombed horribly upon release.  Costing 50 million dollars and barely bringing in 10 million it is clearly a commercial failure.  This is an utter shame as Patrick Lussier directs a B movie masterpiece.  The plot revolves around a recently freed from hell Milton played by Nick Cage as he pursues a cult intent on sacrificing his grand daughter.  He inexplicably teams up with Piper, played by an incredibly bad ass Amber Heard.  The duo is pursued by Satan's accountant.  William Fichtner plays the Accountant as a hero, adding more dimensions and ideas to a film jam packed with them.

This is Drive Angry's strength and weakness.  Farmer and Lussier jam the film with so many different ideas that none have a chance to be fully developed, yet the audience is never bored.  New plot threads are introduced every 10 minutes or so with a new action set piece.  I personally enjoy enigmatic qualities to a story and characters.  While this can often be due to lazy writing, Drive Angry never feels lazy.  It was a fast action horror hybrid with a plethora of ideas.

The film has a 70's grind house flavor, but is not a homage or rip off, it is the successor to those films.  Filled with pizazz and originality.   I missed it in 3-D, but the film still holds up on blu-ray. 

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