Drive Angry

An early candidate for the loudest, dumbest movie of 2011, Patrick Lussier’s willfully inept Drive Angry would desperately like to evoke the retro-sleazy thrills of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s Grindhouse. As a 75-minute drive-in-movie filler, Drive Angry might have been a hoot, but 104 minutes of gunfights, car explosions, gunfights during car explosions and emasculated pedophile-rapist devil worshippers set to ear-splitting heavy metal leaves you benumbed and depressed, especially when unleavened with wit or style. Nicolas Cage shows off his latest wig (blond and choppy, like a mid-’90’s meth dealer), but once the hairstyle has been established, there’s no reason to stick around. He plays a monosyllabic “badass” straddling the divide between life and death for what must be the 50th time; the wrinkle here is that Drive Angry was shot in 3-D, which only proves that Cage can’t act in three dimensions, either.