VCAR TROUBLE
DRIVE ANGRY 3D Starring Nicolas Cage, Amber Heard and William Fichtner
Directed by Patrick Lussier Written by Patrick Lussier and Todd Farmer Millennium Films
Has anyone ever taken Nicolas Cage seriously
as an action hero? Someone must have at some point, but I’m hard-pressed to imagine how it started. He ex- celled as the loveable, hapless doofuses in Moonstruck and Raising Arizona, a loveable, hap- less doofus-cum-tough guy in Wild at Heart and an emotionally devastated writer committing a slow suicide in Leaving Las Vegas. Granted, plum roles don’t come along every year, and into each career a little dreck must fall, but you’d think Cage’s ass would be sore enough from falling on it so many times in ac- tion thrillers that he’d have backed off by now. Of course, his recent financial troubles have compelled him to accept even more ill-advised roles, and here comes another one.
RM38 C I N E M A C A B R E
In fairness, he’s not the only problem with
Drive Angry. Cage plays John Milton (no, not that John Milton), who escapes hell and comes back to Earth to smoke cigars, bang broads, hunt the cultists who murdered his daughter and kid- napped his grandchild, and avoid the demon (William Fichtner) who’s hot on his heels. In the process, a lot of cars get smashed up and a lot more people get beat up, shot up, blown up and otherwise fucked up.
Silly concept? Sure, but
no more so than any of the other post-Grindhouse paeans to ’70s and ’80s exploitation cinema, some of which hit the mark (Pi- ranha 3D, Machete, Hobo with a Shotgun) while oth- ers miss by a block (The Expendables) or a mile (Death Proof from Quentin Tarantino, the man who ironically ignited the whole craze with a shitty movie that underper- formed at the box office). There’s no tried-and-
true formula, but a film of this type absolutely must have the courage of its convictions, which is where Drive Angry repeatedly falls just ago-
nizingly short of the
mark.The stunts are im- pressive and the violence and nudity are beyond what we have any right to expect in multiplex fodder, and yet it always seems to rein itself in at the last second when going too far is exactly what should happen. Cage follows suit with his performance – he’s clearly unhinged and ob- sessed, yet never quite enough to make it mem- orable. The Spinal Tap quote about the fine line between clever and stupid has been invoked many times in these pages. But sometimes it’s the only way to sum things up, and this is one of those times.
JOHN W. BOWEN
EAT YOUR HEART OUT, GEORGE
WE ARE WHAT WE ARE Starring Adrián Aguirre, Miriam Balderas
and Francisco Barreiro Written and directed by Jorge Michel Grau IFC
An old man pukes up black bile and dies in a
shopping mall, whereupon he’s instantly re- moved by a cleaning crew that goes unnoticed by passersby – the opening of Jorge Michel Grau’s impressive directorial debut, We Are What We Are, quickly announces itself as a movie indebted to George A. Romero. Though
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