I have a real soft spot for exploitation movies and B-movies. I absolutely love it when  a movie is so bad it is hilarious and entertaining. What I like even more, though, is a movie that is intentionally bad and done so with tongue-in-cheek gusto. Drive Angry may very well be the best intentionally bad movie I have ever seen. It is unapologetically vulgar, violent, gory and sexually explicit and I for one loved every minute of it. Oh and the 3D was pretty damn good too.

Nicholas Cage stars as John Milton, an appropriately named former resident of Hell who escapes to take revenge on cult leader Jonah King (Billy Burke) for murdering his daughter and kidnapping his granddaughter for a human sacrifice intended to allow Satan to walk the earth. Along the way Milton crosses paths with Piper (Amber Heard), a waitress who comes home at the wrong time and ends up on the service end of her cheating boyfriend’s fists. The pair are pursued by the Accountant (William Fichtner), an agent of Hell sent to bring Milton back. This doesn’t go down as smoothly as the Accountant would like as Milton has stolen the God Killer, a four barreled shot gun that erases targets from existence forever.

Clearly this movie is not going for awards season gold nor is it even trying to approach the lowest of high brow. It is 100% glorious trash that embraces and celebrates its over the top ridiculousness and turns the absurd into an art form. This sleaze isn’t just the film’s foundation either. From beginning to end the film drips with sinful decadence and if this sort of material is your cup of tea then you will be delighted.

The writing is completely batshit with one liners and one ridiculous turn of events after another. The thing about it is that the one liners are hilarious and manage to make you laugh with the writing as you are laughing at the writing. While it is fairly obvious, the plot doles out story details as if there is a grand mystery at foot and that helps the pacing of the film as it builds to its conclusion. The twists along the way don’t surprise you really but the details tend to as they are just so over the top and ridiculous it is hard to believe that they went there. Don’t confuse this with necessarily being ‘hardcore’ as a lot of it amounts to fairly juvenile shock tactics. This is fine as it fits the material but there isn’t much that is genuinely shocking beyond ‘wow they actually did that.’

The action is very well orchestrated and the occasional use of slow motion helps it feel that much more glorious. Where a lot of movies would cut away, Drive Angry shows the gore from hands being blown off to heads disappearing in a spray of red or graphic knee cap shootings. This is done in a fairly matter of fact way and generally doesn’t linger to show you what it has done. This really fits the general attitude of the characters in the movie about violence and its aftermath. Pretty much everyone is nonplussed by the violence they are committing or that is happening around them…everyone except for the waitress Milton bones while in the midst of a gun fight in a scene cribbed from Shoot Em Up but managing to transcend that one in both gore and absurdity.

The performances are hard to judge because of the bad accents and ham fisted delivery that I have to believe was intentional and directed. Nicholas Cage is oddly restrained and almost contemplative as he wanders through the movie killing just about everyone. I think this works well for the character because I think had he played him with his usual bizarre quirks the whole thing would have gone off the rails. Cage delivers one liners in a stoic deadpan and never acknowledges how completely ridiculous his hair looks the entire time and I think that is almost award worthy in and of itself. He plays the character with just the right amount of absurdity and never eye winks to let you know he realizes how silly it all is. Milton is dead serious and  needs to be for the character to work.

Amber Heard manages to bring sexy to the party without bringing along vapid and lifeless as a character who can hold her own right next to Milton. Even when she briefly becomes a damsel in distress she does a ton of damage and barely needs rescuing. Her character kicks ass from beginning to end as well and a big deal isn’t really made of it. The lack of potentially creepy sexual tension between Piper and Milton is also refreshing. They are partners on the adventure but they never even hint at attraction for each other and that is nice to see. William Fichtner has long been one of my favorite character actors and he really steals the show here. Every scene he is in is great and some of the sagging in the third act has a lot to do with his character having less to do. Fichtner’s tone here is just right and his line deliveries are golden.

Billy Burke manages the main villain with just the right level of charisma and crazy and avoids going completely loony. This restraint allows him to feel legitimately dangerous without devolving into some kind of cartoon character. For his part, David Morse plays his small role as Milton’s old friend Webster with just the right amount of quiet disbelief and I can’t help but wonder if he was channeling his feeingls of confusion as to how he was talked into being in this picture in the first place.

I saw this in 3D and lately I have been completely unimpressed with the effect given that most of the films touting it are using cut rate post-conversion effects but Drive Angry was shot in 3D and you can tell. One of the nice things about this is that not only is the camera built for it but the scenes can be properly set up to make the best of it. And it isn’t just depth of field here either. There are plenty of moments where bullets fly out of the screen or things are thrown at the audience. These are the sorts of things that would normally annoy but in a movie like this they are pretty much necessary to drive the schlock factor all the way home.

Conclusion [8.5 out of 10]

Drive Angry is definitely not a movie for everyone. If you don’t like a bunch of sex, profanity, violence, gore and batshit crazy things going on that make very little sense then you are better served elsewhere. Somewhere very, very far away from this movie. If you are into exploitation films and crazy B-movies that are unashamed of their trashiness to a point that it celebrates it then Drive Angry is right up your alley. There will be plenty of people who hate this movie and who refuse to see it just because of Nic Cage but if your taste runs to the delightfully trashy you will be very pleased. Drive Angry is this year’s Machete and it works just about as well.