Movie Review - Drive Angry

  Drive Angry (2011)

Director: Patrick Lussier

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Amber Heard, William Fichtner

It's unclear when exactly the character of "Nicolas Cage" became as entertaining as any character the actor himself actually portrays on screen.  What is clear is exactly how popular the actor is on the Internet as an entity completed removed from any of his films.  A quick search for "Nicolas Cage" on Know Your Meme provides a little insight into that popularity.  That search yields 182 images.  182 images of Cage face swapped, photo shopped, and otherwise meme-ified for the world to see, and I think it's safe to say that those 182 images don't represent a fraction of one percent of the total amount of absurd Cage-related images and videos floating around on the world wide web.  Just over the last couple of days in fact, this bit of Cage craziness has went viral.

Without a doubt, the career of Nicolas Cage has been one of the most unpredictable and truly intriguing Hollywood stories of the past 20 to 30 years.  Of course, things didn't start out so provocatively for Cage.  He is from a famous acting family, and got his start with bit roles in films like Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Valley Girl.  He worked his way up to star status from there, and became somewhat of a go-to-guy as the lead in comedic stuff like Raising Arizona and Guarding Tess.  Then, in 1995, he won a Best Actor Academy Award for the critically acclaimed Leaving Las Vegas.  After that, things got...weird.

Tracking the careers of actors after they've won an Academy Award is an entertaining exercise...what exactly does one do after having achieved the greatest acclaim one can for an individual performance in Hollywood?  Especially at the relatively tender age of 31, as Cage did?  Well if you are Nicolas Cage, the answer is that you try to become an action star.  It's a role that Cage had never previously been cast in, and understandably.  He lacks the traditional looks, presence, or raw physicality of action stars like Bruce Willis or Sly Stallone.  Nonetheless, Cage spent the mid-90's cranking out big budget action blockbusters like Con Air, Face/Off, and The Rock.  To be honest, those movies were probably the roots of the cult of Cage.  In Con Car, Cage sports a ridiculous hair-do (something that would come to be a trend in his career) and an even more ridiculous faux-South accent.  In Face/Off, he takes scene chewing to a whole new level, over-acting and hamming his way through every second of his turn as the villain Castor Troy.

The seeds of the elements that would make Cage such a cult figure were clearly on display in those films: crazy faces, bug-eyed overacting, inexplicable turn of phrases, odd body language and dialogue delivery...and of course, just a general sense of weirdness of the variety that has given fellow member of the Unsettling Actor's Club Christopher Walken his entire career.  Heading into the 21st century though, Cage decided to move back into dramatic acting, appearing in serious (and often award-baiting) fare like Windtalkers, Adaptation., and Matchstick Men.  The results were a little mixed but most Cage movies from that era failed to deliver from a critical or commercial standpoint, even if Cage was praised for his performance.

So in 2006, Cage began the next phase of his career.  Whether he began making movies strictly for the paycheck, because he lost the ability to say the word no like that Jim Carrey movie, or simply because he owes a lot of favors to various untalented people in Hollywood, the world may never know.  But we do know that absolutely irredeemably terrible movies like Wicker Man, Next, Ghost Rider, and Knowing came out of this phase.  And Cage became a bear-suit punching, flamethrower peeing, blazing moose observing walking meme of a man along.  The one most consistent question during all of this has been just how self-aware Nicolas Cage is.  In other words: does he realize how ridiculous the rest of the world thinks he is?  And if he does, what does he think about it?  Cage has always been weird (naming his kid after Superman, owning a castle), but it's unclear how much of this behavior has been Cage embracing the character of "Nicolas Cage", or Cage just being Cage.

With Bad Lieutenant and this movie, Drive Angry, though, we can clearly determine that Cage has entered yet another phase of his career: that of self-aware audience troller.  Yes, Mr. Cage knows exactly what the world expects of him, and now he is in the business of just messing with us.  There is simply no other way to explain a movie like Drive Angry.  The movie is bad, of course.  But it's also probably one of the two or three most entertaining Cage movies (along with Kick-Ass and Lieutenant) of the last decade.  And not entertaining in a so-bad it's-good way, either. Drive Angry is a legitimately fun joy ride of a movie, and it's most redeeming aspect is that it doesn't take itself seriously like previous Cage bombs (see Ghost Rider).

I should say that, importantly, Drive Angry winks at the audience, but doesn't get too hokey about it.  It also has some genuinely great action scenes, and makes good use of 3D effects.  In addition, the surprisingly talented cast of actors (particularly the hilarious William Fichtner, who is typically great) seem to be having fun, Amber Heard is great eye candy, and of course, there is Nicolas Cage.  If looking ridiculous were an Olympic event in the career of Nicolas Cage, there is no doubt that A.) It would be one of the most hotly contested events in Olympic history and B.) Drive Angry would be the runaway gold medalist.  Yes, Cage looks more ridiculous in this than he did in Con Air.  His hair is indescribable.  His outfit is laughable.  He looks like exactly what would happen if you stuck a 50-year old man into Nickelback at the peak of their powers and tried to pass him off as a rock star.

And yet Cage sells it.  He struts, growls, and sneers his way through his performance as shotgun-toting badass John Milton (get it?) with such pizzazz that I actually bought it in spite of myself.  And fans of great Nicolas Cage moments, this is the movie for you.  There is one scene in particular that had me literally holding my stomach with laughter the whole time, and I'm convinced it will go down as the craziest scene in a Nicolas Cage movie ever (which is saying something).  I won't go into to too much detail in order to not spoil it, but suffice to say that John Milton brings new meaning to the term multi-tasking.  He manages to smoke a cigarette and chug whiskey throughout an extended gunfight, and those are the two least impressive things that he does.  It's hard to give a rating to a movie like Drive Angry.  It doesn't take itself seriously, so it's a challenge for me to do just that.  As bad as it was, though, I was entertained, which is more than I can say for some of the more unfortunate Cage movies of recent years.  Here's hoping that this new phase of Cage's career will continue for quite some time before he decides to change gears yet again.

Verdict: 5/10