Darkmatters Review: Drive Angry 3D

Drive Angry 3D (18)


Dir. Patrick Lussier

Reviewed by Matt Adcock

“Tell them, I’m coming… Hell is already walking the Earth”

How far would you go to avenge the death of your daughter and save the life of her baby? If you’re John Milton (Nic Cage in full on wild eyed, insane mode) then you’d break out of hell itself and hunt down the sick murdering cult leader who killed your loved one and plans to sacrifice her baby to Satan. Seems only right really.

"Amber Heard - looks very good in 3D"

Drive Angry 3D is a lurid, pulpy nitrous powered assault on your frontal lobes. I don't think anything can quite prepare you for this balls out, full throttle overload of wanton 3D action, sex and violence. So if you’re easily offended – be it by nudity, gore, cussing, violence or dodgy acting, then you really shouldn’t check this film. If however you like your plot and dialogue off the scale stupid, your women smoking hot and your action totally over the top, then Drive Angry might just be the best film you’ve ever seen.

Drive Angry 3D delivers everything that limp comic adaptation Ghost Rider failed to. Here Cage brings his Kick Ass A-game and is ably assisted by Amber Heard who scorches the screen, sizzling in 3D.

"This is 'driving really angry'"

The revenge / save the baby plot won’t win any originality awards but it serves as an excuse for director Patrick ’My Bloody Valentine’ Lussier to wreak as much bloody carnage as humanly possible – all in eye-popping 3D. Lussier delivers a megaton action horror that has put him on the cinematic map, and bagged him the right to make the next Halloween and Hell Raiser films. He is also an unlikely master of 3D – cars, bullets, blood and babes are surely what 3D was developed to deliver and Drive Angry 3D has the best 3D around.

Amber ‘All the boys love Mandy Lane’ Heard is the hot ticket actress of the moment and she delivers a great love interest / side kick to Cage here. The supporting cast are strong too with the excellent William Fichtner channelling Christopher Walken as Hell’s own unstoppable ‘Accountant’ and Billy Burke is all twitchy satanic menace as deranged cult leader Jonah King.

"Not just a pretty face"

Drive Angry 3D is a cult classic in the making, packing mean classic US automobiles such as the ’69 Dodge Charger along with unforgettable scenes including a ‘Shoot ’Em Up’ homage where Cage gets into a massive close quarters gun battle whilst making love to waitress.

It might not be big or clever, but Drive Angry 3D is perfect pulp fiction schlock and action fans should sell their souls to see this!

Out of a potential 5 you have to go with a Darkmatters:

ööööö

(5 - a perfect storm of grindhouse B movie action)...

Awesomeness ööööö – don't fear the reaper
Laughs ööö – slap stick violence a go go
Horror öööö – goes over the line of good taste many times
Babes ööööö – Amber Heard is a thermo-nuclear hottie
Spiritual Enlightenment ööö – did you know that Satan doesn't like when people sacrifice babies to him?
- - -

Second opinion - try Bloody Disgusting who call Drive Angry 'first “fun” horror movie of the year'.

Try this pro / con list of checking the film too from BLOG CABIN

"Amber is the hot ticket actress for 2011"

More Amber Heard reviews on Darkmatters:

Miss Heard stars in And Soon The Darkness

Best looking zombie in Zombieland

Comedy star in Pinapple Express

and

Trophy girlriend in Never Back Down

Darkmatters review - Knowing

Knowing (15)

Dir. Alex Proyas 'previously of The Crow, Dark City and I Robot'

Reviewed by Matt Adcock

“Knowing me, knowing you, ah ha!!” sorry, the wife’s just been hitting the Singstar Abba on the PS3 – whilst I got to witness Knowing and report back on its merits.

What would you do if you had a list of every major disaster which had occurred for the last 50 years – and it included some that hadn’t happened yet, one of which might just be the end of the entire world? That’s the premise for Alex Proyas’ stylish apocalyptic sci-fi epic Knowing which bites off a hard to digest slice of disturbing ‘fate or determinism’ theological debate.

Nicolas Cage (looking more like a startled goat with every film he makes) is an unlikely astrophysics professor whose son Caleb (rising child star Chandler ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ Canterbury) is the recipient of the disaster tracking page of numbers.

Things get progressively more freaky as the predicted disasters occur in a flurry of budget trashing large scale set pieces that include a truly horrific subway train crash. Knowing keeps the audience guessing by setting up a string of key questions such as ‘What happened to the odd looking little girl who wrote the doomsday number list itself as part of a school time capsule project?’, ‘Why didn’t she fill in a National Lottery grid or two and live happily ever after?’ or ‘who are those weird, darkly clad mystery men who start following young Caleb around?’ There are lots of ideas here, mix and matching influences from numerous sci-fi classics and the result has polarised critics but for me Knowing delivered a decent slice of nail biting hokum.

I freely confess to being a big fan of Alex ‘The Crow and Dark City’ Proyas, he is a visionary director whose last movie I Robot managed to turn the Asimov’s high brow robo-future nightmare into a decent action flick for Will Smith. Here, even saddled with a rank performance from Cage, there is much to appreciate - not least the impressively bleakly hopeful spiritual elements that elevate this way beyond the like of weaker end of days efforts such as The Happening.

Biblical in its scope and uncompromising in the scenes of devastation Knowing isn’t really light entertainment. But, if you’re looking for something to provoke debate and make you wonder again about our human nature and future destiny you ‘know’ what to choose.

Arbitrary Darkmatters final rating of: öööööööö (8 -Not Knowingly Underwhelmed)

Darkmatters quick reference guide:

Action 8
Style 8
Babes 6
Comedy 6
Spiritual Enlightenment 9

Not convinced? check out this review of the film over at FANGORIA - best line:

"And the simple fact that it has more on its mind than the usual empty megamovie spectacle is a plus, even if that mind is severely addled. KNOWING is a lot of things—too many things—but dull isn’t one of them.."