The Anger Parade Drives. Angry.

DRIVE ANGRY is a film full of promise and problems. I was grinning like a fucking skull one minute and then dying of boredom the next, due largely to poor pacing and an apparent lack of cohesive vision. Overall I would say I enjoyed the film, but I don't know if I liked it. It just wasn't... angry enough, for the Anger Parade.

This would usually be where I'd write a recap, but fuck that. I've embedded the trailer at the end of the post, and it tells you way more than you need to know. So watch that, then come back.

William Fichtner almost single handed-ly saves the film. His Accountant, who reminded me consistently of Agent Smith, grabs hold of ever scene he's in and lets you forget about Nic Cage being kinda angry in the background. He just sort of... saunters along, fearless and confident. His success is a certainty, and he never acts otherwise. I believed he was something otherworldly. But he wasn't emotionless or robotic, like Agent Smith (who was a program and thus supposed to be emotionless and robotic). The Accountant feels alive but unconcerned, like a cat lazily playing with a mouse it's already caught. It's a great performance. But not enough to save this movie. Along with Fichtner, Amber Heard's tire-smoking hot Piper and Billy Burke's drawling, devil-worshiping Jonah King are both entertaining and engaging in their own way. I found Piper to be surprisingly tough and foulmouthed. A perfect sidekick. And Jonah King is charismatic enough to be a believable cult leader, but annoying enough I wanted him to die fucking horribly.

The action was fun but, for a movie called DRIVE ANGRY, there wasn't enough of it. What should have been a high-octane, blood fueled race from start to finish limped along like a muscle car full of bullet holes. That is to say it sputtered and died repeatedly and took awhile to get started again. The fights were gory but silly, and not in that good, Grindhouse way either. Everything felt too shiny... it had that Hollywood polish, but this film should have been gritty unpolished to match the mood it wanted to set. Even scenes that had a tractor-trailer load of of promise too often were derailed by fatal blowouts just as they should have taken off. For example, there is a scene in which Cage's character, Milton, is attacked by a dozen devil-worshiping rednecks with melee weapons while he's fucking a truck stop waitress. Follows is a slapped together, unfunny scene where he shoots and kills them while he continues to fuck this woman. It could have been awesome. It's not.

The jokes... the jokes were fucking terrible. The 3D effects, which were probably cheesy in 3D, were triply so in 2D. Poorly rendered bullets flying toward the screen, slow motion, close up coin flips, unbelievable glass breakage... it looks juvenile, which goes back to my point about it feeling too glossy, where it should be dark and gritty. The plot is silly, but that's okay. What's not okay is DRIVE ANGRY too often pit-stopping to expound on some bullshit we don't fucking care about. There is a short, unexplained pre-credit sequence where we see a car busting out of a fiery prison. There is a bullshit voice-over about criminals thinking they can get away, but can't, blah blah blah. The should have info-dumped the plot right here, and then never stopped the fucking car for the rest of the movie. Driving, shooting, fucking, shooting, driving. That should have been the storyboard for DRIVE ANGRY. But instead it limps and fumbles and the result is a kind of entertaining film that is worth the dollar to rent at Redbox, but that's about it, and please don't forget to take it back on time. You really don't want to pay an extra dollar.

But if you think DRIVE ANGRY sounds awesome, then I have good news for you. They drop some corny bullshit before the credits that leaves the story open to a sequel. So look for Nic Cage as John Milton in

DRIVE ANGRIER 3D

Coming soon to a theater near you.

And here's the full trailer in HD for your viewing pleasure. This trailer is, however, fucking terrible. Just saying.