Joyless. Drive Angry might know what it is, but to be played in such a way where everyone is playing it straight (the exception being William Fichtner)?

Here's an example of what I'm talking about. The "fucking" shootout is absolutely perfect. Perfect in tone, gore, nudity (and bonus points for Cage being fully clothed), and sheer stupidity. It's so good that the woman Cage's character is fucking is getting off. Getting off of course because of the sex, but because of the violence. She's fully aware of what's going on. It's the one good scene in the movie because of all these reasons. Seconds later, the fucking and the shooting stop, and the woman suddenly becomes horrified because of what's happened. Huh? As a matter of fact, minutes later, the "police" and I put police in quotation marks because they never solve, figure out, or accomplish anything (well I guess that's not too different...) find this woman, still naked, hidden away in some supply closet that's wide open for everyone to see, yet no one bothers to cover her or take her away somewhere. And she's still horrified. Now normally I'm guessing this would be the correct reaction, but it's not the correct reaction for this movie. It's not even the correct reaction based on how she was reacting during the entire ordeal. It's off putting.

And that in a nutshell is the entire movie, aside from William Fichtner. Every actor in this thing realize what kind of movie they're in (except apparently that one glorified extra who's sole job in the movie is to protect the baby; she never says a line yet you can tell she's a decent actress because her reactions and facial expressions come off genuine), but Fichtner is the only one who takes the time to chew the scenery and wink at the audience. Since everyone else is on a different page the entire movie as a result fails. This might have been ignorable if the 3D was utilized and had decent gore, but those scenes are few and far between.

½* (D-) - And that's ignoring all the gaps in logic (out of all of them, the one that baffles me most is that the film takes place in Texas, moves to Oklahoma, has characters from Florida, and ends in Louisiana, yet cops from Colorado are involved?) and the movie clearly running out of money when it came to CGI. CGI/Cartoon gas trucks, people being shot up into the heavens despite it being made quite clear that both God and the Devil do not like it when someone (like a preacher) worships the devil and tries to sacrifice a baby in his name. Shouldn't he have been blasted into oblivion instead of being shot upwards or downwards? Oh, and apparently you can be a stoner, have a car door flung at you at a very high speed, and just get knocked down and quickly get back up. He probably should've been at the very least concussed, or at the very most, cut in half.

The adrenaline rush ran out I guess.

Either that or Cage's character was so devilishly good that he fucked all the sense of sound and sight out of her.

I was looking closely at her face (it really was the best scene in the movie) and to me it seemed like at first she wasn't really aware of it all when he first started to throw her around and considering everything was slow-mo, by the end you could see in her look that she was terrified.

This thing had some of the worst special effects I've ever seen in a major motion picture.

Thankfully. This particular movie would be worse with better/crisper/more convincing effects.

Wow, they are really trying to hide what this movie is actually about. Just got the Blu-ray in the mail today from Netflix and this is the description on their sleeve/their website:

Career criminal Milton (Nicolas Cage) breaks out of prison to pursue the cult members who killed his daughter and kidnapped her baby. Milton is in turn chased by a serial killer (William Fichtner) who's determined to catch him before he can find redemption. Aiding Milton in his quest is Piper (Amber Heard), a comely waitress who supplies him with a muscle car that he uses to outrace the police that are hot on his trail.

LOL.

What an awesome movie. Such a great time. One of the main reasons I had a great time was Amber Heard's surprisingly good performance. I'm a fan of hers, but from the previews her performance didn't look very impressive. But in addition to being sexy as hell, she really brought something extra to her part. With another actress this could have just been your typical one-dimensional eye candy role, but Heard seemed to really flesh out the character. She was a joy to watch.

Anyway, a total blast. I'm sad I missed it in theaters and really sad that it didn't perform better at the Box Office.

B+/A-

Amber Heard >>>> rest of the film.

William Fichtner > Amber Heard, though

Hobo With A Shotgun > Drive Angry.

I really liked him in it, but Amber was the heart and soul of the film .

More like the tits and ass.

She was all of those things .

As much as I enjoy those aspects of Amber Heard, I disagree that those were her highlights in Drive Angry. She demonstrated true lead acting chops here, and carried this film as much as Cage did.

Without Heard, the film would be unwatchable, totally.

If I was gay, I would wholeheartedly agree to that statement.

Well I'm gay and I think she made it a better film .