Drive Angry 3D

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  • Drive Angry 3D

    A selection of excerpts from MetaCritic about the movie (assuming it's ok and legal to post 'em).

    There's inexplicable fun, I find, reading reviews that so skilfully and good-humoredly trash the trash.

    Every one of these reviews hits the mark.

    Yes, I saw this.


    Movieline
    Stephanie Zacharek
    75
    There's even a shootout sequence that plays out, from start to finish, while our hero is in flagrante. That's something I don't believe I've ever seen in a movie.
    (Just what so many pros and amateurs alike advise: show 'em something they've never seen before! --DonR)


    Orlando Sentinel
    Roger Moore
    63
    [Amber] Heard sets herself up as a Megan Fox with talent. And Cage? He delivers. Mock him for his bad choices if you will, but consider this. Who else could have made this work, or would even want to?



    Chicago Sun-Times
    Roger Ebert
    50
    Here is an exercise in deliberate vulgarity, gross excess, and the pornography of violence, not to forget garden variety pornography. You get your money's worth.



    New York Daily News
    Elizabeth Weitzman
    50
    Pure grindhouse, so committed to its own junkiness that it is, in its way, a pleasure to behold.



    Empire
    Chris Hewitt
    40
    A shambling, ponderous mess that aims to be a trashy cult classic and merely ends up in the trash....

  • #2
    Re: Drive Angry 3D

    It was okay, some fun setpieces. Just from the premise, I got the vibe that the movie was written by someone who spent more than a few hours as a stoned teenager staring at the cover of Meatloaf's "Bat out of Hell."

    But for a 3D movie, Drive Angry plays oddly flat. Not so much the visuals (which are okay) but the big picture. You can recognize the gags, but they just lay there and expect to be laughed at just because they’re jokes. It desperately wants to be a player in the neo-grindhouse subgenre spawned by Tarantino and cultivated by the likes of Robert Rodriguez, a return to the scratchy, splicy drive-in flicks of the Seventies, polished with blood and CGI mayhem to a 21st century gloss, cartoons that take delirious glee in depicting exactly what kind of mayhem ensues when the Coyote’s Acme plan to annihilate the Road Runner backfire on him. They’re all about the giddy excess (sort of like my previous run-on), spattered with boobs, blood and bullets.

    Drive Angry delivers with some of that, but lacks the sweat and maturity (for want of a better word) to deliver the giddy nihilism that’s needed to pull off this kind of film successfully.

    But as a 3D movie with copious amounts of blood, boobs and vehicular mayhem, it’s close enough for rock-n-roll. Or as the end credits song shows, close enough for a wannabe to approximate Meatloaf while failing to capture the distinct voice or operatic kitsch.
    "Forget it, Jake. It's Hollywood."

    My YouTube channel.

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: Drive Angry 3D

      Originally posted by Donreel View Post
      Movieline
      Stephanie Zacharek
      75
      There's even a shootout sequence that plays out, from start to finish, while our hero is in flagrante. That's something I don't believe I've ever seen in a movie.
      (Just what so many pros and amateurs alike advise: show 'em something they've never seen before! --DonR)
      The exact same scene is in SHOOT EM UP.

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: Drive Angry 3D

        I watched this yesterday. Strangely, I really liked it. It wasn't your standard revenge flick and I did wonder a few times where it was going. But it was fun and different so I give it that.

        I liked the pacing of it. Sometimes felt like the director didn't know what he was doing, then I'd be surprised and think, "Cool."

        It's got to be a love/hate type flick. But I think I loved it.

        Comment


        • #5
          Re: Drive Angry 3D

          I also liked it. The 1st half is a blast, and while it loses some of that craziness on the 2nd half, it's still good.

          While the film follows a traditional structure, it was often impossible to know what was going to happen next. Which is a nice feeling to have, and gets rarer and rarer the more films you watch.

          I particularly loved Amber Heard in this. She is playing a kind of a character who most films would look down upon: a slutty, white trash bimbo who has made a lot of bad choices in her life. But there is surprising depth to her, and obviously the writer, the director and the actress all loved the character.

          The film constantly sets ups cliche situations... And then does something surprising with them. A good example of this is how Heard gets constantly kidnapped by the bad guys. And you always wait for Cage to save her, as that is what happens in movies like this... But he always fails at saving her. And so instead she must save herself, successfully.

          Another nice touch is when the two enter a motel to sleep over, and you of course except them to have sex. But they don't, instead Amber goes to a bar and scores with a good looking guy 20 years younger than Cage. And Cage himself has to settle for a middle-aged woman who is way past her prime.

          The film is pretty much filled with moments like that. It always sets up cliches, and then twists them around. It's a lot smarter film than most people give it credit for.

          And the bedroom shooting scene is even better than the one in Shoot Em Up, because Drive Angry fills it with gratuitous gore and nudity that the other film was lacking.

          Comment


          • #6
            Re: Drive Angry 3D

            Agreed. That scene had me in f*ckin stitches.

            Comment


            • #7
              Re: Drive Angry 3D

              Actually, I keep meaning to check this film out. I'm a sucker for Cage, I'll confess.

              Originally posted by Donreel View Post
              There's even a shootout sequence that plays out, from start to finish, while our hero is in flagrante.
              I had to look this word up because my understanding of flagrant (no E) renders this sentence as incomplete or making no sense.

              Oddly enough, dictionaries told me this word doesn't exist, so can somebody please explain it (though I guess it means sex (of some kind)? I feel kind of out in the cold here...
              Cufk, Tish, Sips.

              Comment


              • #8
                Re: Drive Angry 3D

                in flagrante delicto is what the reviewer meant.

                HH

                Comment


                • #9
                  Re: Drive Angry 3D

                  Originally posted by tuukka View Post
                  And Cage himself has to settle for a middle-aged woman who is way past her prime.
                  I dunno...I thought she had a zesty maturity.
                  "Forget it, Jake. It's Hollywood."

                  My YouTube channel.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Re: Drive Angry 3D

                    Originally posted by Signal30 View Post
                    I dunno...I thought she had a zesty maturity.
                    By real life standards, she was of course a fine looking woman in her 40's. But by Hollywood fantasy standards she was past her prime, particularly when compared to Amber Heard.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Re: Drive Angry 3D

                      Originally posted by haroldhecuba View Post
                      in flagrante delicto is what the reviewer meant.

                      HH
                      Thanks.
                      Cufk, Tish, Sips.

                      Comment

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