Nicolas Cage is a remarkably difficult actor to gauge these days: long-gone are the days when his occasionally one-dimensional "range" was acceptable because of the iconic, cult-like nature of the films he appeared in - Con Air, The Rock, The Cotton Club - to be replaced with a healthy perpetual wonder at why he continues to attach himself to the projects that he chooses to. And yet, Cage is still definitely able to turn heads with his performances: he was brilliant in Kick-Ass, and appropriately bonkers in Bad Lieutenant and I surely can't be the only one to have enjoyed his turn as Indiana Jones-lite in the two National treasure films? But no matter how many good turns he offers it's difficult not to be distracted by the monumental horrendousness of everything else. In the past couple of years, we've seen Season of the Witch, Knowing, Bangkok Dangerous, next and Ghostrider - all of which should have come with some kind of Health Warning on them. And now, this week's release of
Drive Angryon blu-ray reignites one question in particular with some vigour: is Drive Angry the answer to all of those prayers that yearn for Cage to make good films? Well, no it's not, quite frankly. But, it's not the worst Cage film to have ever been released over the thirty years he has been a working actor. And yet, sadly, in the same breath it is utterly forgettable beyond the immediate experience of watching it. The film has no lasting legacy, because it tries way too hard to be an achingly cool Grindhouse derivative without ever accomplishing the nuances that that type of film-making inherently involves.
But if they'd got a few more things right, Drive Angry could have been great. There are definitely some credentials that suggest with a slightly more intelligent script, which understood that making a Grindhouse-style flick doesn't mean simply aping "hip" directors who have made their names in that arena, that the film could have worked as a B-Movie pastiche in the vein of Machete. But then the script-writing team did include
Todd Farmer who has previously turned his hand to Jason X and My Bloody Valentine, and will next be seen credited as the writing talent behind Halloween III, and
Patrick Lussier who wrote Dracula 2001 and it's two sequels. So that's pretty much no pedigree at all to work from. The real problem is that the writer/director team have made little attempt to make something wholly original - perhaps due to the films they have previously worked on - so even if the story isn't entirely copied from somewhere else, it does feel like it for the most part. In this chase-lead story of vengeance and devilry, it is possible to see a mucky cross-breed of Death Proof, Taken and End of Days, with the bat-shit lunacy of Crank thrown in for good measure. But as with most films that are so easily picked apart into the components of its references, there is little to suggest individuality in the creative approach, and while you can obviously see attempts to copy the work of Tarantino and Rodriguez nothing is seen all the way through.
The cast makes for impressive reading: aside from Mr Cage, we get the untold pleasure of seeing
William Fichtner play an agent of Satan (in a casting move that reminded me of the brilliance of End of Days' use of Gabriel Byrne as the horned one himself), the always solid and always under-rated
David Morse, the sure-to-be-an-even-more-massive-hit
Amber Heard and a menacing but incredibly charismatic
Billy Burke. But it's hard to feel too much in terms of lasting attraction to any of the characters (though Fichtner is incredible) when the script is so off-putting and disappointingly misses the point entirely. It should have been utterly hyped up, dialling the ridiculousness up to the extreme, pushing the bad taste envelope a little further and then the script wouldn't have even been a concern, but the camp is never enough, and the self-aware humour isn't either for that to work for Drive Angry. Having said all of that, if you can ignore the inadequacies of the script, the film is actually extremely well-made, from a purely technical stand-point. It looks great, which makes for a good start point for the high-definition transfer, and the decision to shoot in 3D, rather than do a hatchet job in post-production means the film looks a lot cleaner than say Clash of the Titans. But then, it isn't wholly surprising that it's a technically impressive film, given Lussier's long career history as an editor of some accomplishment: but you can't rely on the foundation of a terrible script even if you have those skills.
So, really, Drive Angry is a disappointing tale of execution not quite matching potential - it isn't a terrible Nic Cage performance, but he seems oddly to recognise these days that he has a certain aura to him, as audiences and film-makers realise that he comes with a chequered history. The same way he plays a cultish character in Kick-Ass, Cage seems to want to aim towards off-kilter coolness, and while he doesn't quite get there with Drive Angry (when you hold it up against say Con Air), you get the feeling that might be fruitful ground for him to plough in future. It's just a shame we have to endure Ghost Rider 2 before that can possibly happen.
Quality
It might be a fairly disappointing experience, but by crikey it looks good in high-definition: the level of detail verges on perfection throughout, and the textures on show are incredibly impressive, especially in facial detail, which is where transfers are often found out (as studios add false gloss to hide the imperfections on their actors' faces). Colours are great throughout, both in natural tones and the more extreme reaches of the pallette, though in certain scenes flesh tones do swing slightly towards the more orange end, which I still find somewhat annoying even in these brief glimpses. But other than that, the transfer shines, with no signs of artificial manipulation - the greatest achievement is that it all looks quite effortlessly natural for a hyper-real film. The sound transfer is almost as impressive: it is typically bombastic for an action-heavy film, and suits the bias towards exaggeration that triumphs in most of the scenes. As immersive and bass-heavy the scenes are, the musical accompaniment and dialogue sequences are crisp and perfectly clear, so even though the script isn't exactly brilliant, at least we can hear exactly what the writers intended us to.
Extras
Not a huge amount, with an audio commentary with writer/actor Todd Farmer and writer/director Patrick Lussier taking on the speaking duties (though Lussier is particularly gruff thanks to a sore throat), backed with two deleted scenes (with commentary) and a fairly reasonable interactive Picture-in-Picture feature. It's nothing ground-breaking, but fans will probably get a kick out of the detail that the co-commentators go into. Audio Commentary: With writer Todd Farmer and Writer/Director Patrick Lussier. Deleted Scenes: "You Made Me Cheat" and "Morgan Girl." Access: Drive Angry
Drive Angry is
out now on Blu-ray.