Fractured Fairy Tale

Artsy Action Yarn tries too hard
by Morgan P Salvo


 Director Joe Wright (Atonement, Pride &; Prejudice, The Soloist) has now helmed an action pic. He knows how to make a film look good with actors emoting all over the place but somehow plays it too safe by the end. Sure, he puts all the pieces together in a visually stunning way with equal parts action and story but there’s still something hollow at the core of Hanna.

Right off the bat we’re introduced to the action with father (Eric Bana) and daughter Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) practicing fighting skills in some remote snowy region. And these are no run of the mill skills; they are down and dirty combat survival kill-or-be-killed tactics. She’s being trained for a mission to kill a cunning intelligence operative (Cate Blanchett) who also has been expecting her for years. Hanna sets out across Europe and through a myriad of adventures discovers some secrets about her past. This is the teenage Spy Who Came in From the Cold.
Hanna’s initial revenge set up seems too simple and the twists are divulged mostly through conversation in between the running, fighting, and killing. Through her diligence Hanna proves her mettle. There’s an underlying fairy tell here with the Wicked Witch and Snow White but its plundered aside by all the action.
Hanna’s seclusion from the real world has her quest unravel in new world wonderment which brings a nice touch to Ronan’s (Lovely Bones, The Way Back & Atonement) acting style. Ronan displays intelligence through innocent ignorance. Her fascination of her surroundings, people and music is perfectly fused with her primal bewilderment of how little she truly understands the modern world. Bana (Troy, Munich) is convincing as caring super-spy Dad. Blanchett has a lot of diabolical fun being the wicked witch/evil agent. Tom Hollander is amusing as the gay head-honcho hit-man wearing tennis outfits while leading his duo of skinhead rockers in a kind of a three stooges pursuit of Hanna.Everyone affects some sort of bizarre European accent and oddly enough Blanchett adopts a southern drawl
There are some crowd pleasing lines like when Hanna is asked “What did you mother die from”, her response is “Three Bullets”. Speaking of gunplay there is a somewhat high body count in this flick.
Hanna has some nice quiet moments alongside blood pumping action assisted by the Chemical Brothers’ reliable soundtrack. Meanwhile Wright gives us an arty light show incorporating crazy camera tricks and shots from every possible angle.
There’s one gigantic glaring unexplained error that really takes you out of the moment. After a scene depicting Hanna’s overreaction to a TV by asking “What’s that?” Later we see this lethal fighting bundle of doom in a Berlin mall typing away at a computer learning about her DNA .Where did these mad skills come from? She certainly didn’t take any computer courses while dodging bullets.

There’s a sequence near the end that takes place in an abandoned amusement park with decaying dinosaur statues that looks like it could’ve been shot down highway 97 at Chiloquin’s now defunct Thunderbeast Park but Hanna was Shot in Studio Babelsberg, located in Potsdam-Babelsberg, Germany, the oldest large-scale film studio in the world and Hanna gets extra points for being European
When all is said and done, this flick is a mixture of sci-fi meets morality play sucked into the vortex of action/espionage yarn. Hanna delivers the goods but with all its finesse somehow wallows too often in its own self awareness.

Hanna
Starring Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana, Cate Blanchett, Tom Hollander
Director: Joe Wright
Rated P-G 13
2 ½ stars

Leaving on an Astral Plane

Too many ghosts and too many old tricks spoil the broth
by Morgan P Salvo

Ah… another haunted house movie or as the previews say “its not the house that’s haunted …it’s your son!” Well house or son Insidious, still qualifies as a haunted house flick sans “haunting” in the title, thereby destined to suck.
The definition of insidious is a) stealthily treacherous or deceitful b) intended to entrap c) operating or proceeding in an inconspicuous or seemingly harmless way but actually with grave effect I’ll go with all three.
This movie is so insipid and simplistic it’s a wonder it got the go ahead. I guess with the reteaming of director James Wan and writer Leigh Whannell (creators of the very first Saw) and Oren Peli the producer of Paranormal Activity (one of the worst movies ever made) there was a glimmer of hope. Well hope be damned. Insidious wipes away any chance for redemption, as the pairing of the worst and best filmmakers of this genre doesn’t even come out a wash.

Insidious is about a couple (Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne) who’ve just moved into Amityville Horror ’s neighborhood with a home plagued by the usual creaking floorboards, clanks, howls, bumps-in-the nights and every sinister disturbance in the book. When the family's young sons lapses into a coma we find his spirit has been hijacked, overtaken by ghosts who have a way of popping up in different forms and silhouetted nightmare faces.
There’s a zillion tricks in this Poltergeist remake thrown at us at varying degrees but main scare tactic is supposed to be its slow pace. But it's far more annoying and boring than frightening.
Beginning with creepy credits emanating ghost-like vapors Insidious takes a cue from Drag Me to Hell by launching the name of the film in huge letters and blaring music. Speaking of which, the frenzied avant garde string arrangement by Joe Bishara is set to rival Goblin’s finger-nail-on-a-blackboard Suspiria’s soundtrack. Soon the parents and children move from the haunted house to find the same demonic crap happening to them all over again in their new place. Send in the ghost-busters (Whannell and Angus Sampson), the medium (Lin Shaye) and a secretive mom (Barbary Hershey) and away we paranormally go. We find out about an astral pane called “the further” where entities get in line and basically take a number to try and possess the soul of an empty body.

Insidious could have ventured into high camp if it didn’t take itself so seriously. When I play back all the stuff that happened it sounds downright funny. But it wasn’t. Dealing with an out-of nowhere coma the doctors comes from the “Never seen anything like this” school of medical science. A scary baby monitor pumping out voices straight from Black X-mas doesn’t jar. Ghost-hunters show up with plenty of gizmos, bells and whistles while the clairvoyant medium wears a gasmask for a lantern lit séance. The gadgetry happy ghost hunters are obviously comic relief but its too obvious to be funny as they fuss around with antique cameras and vintage View-Master gizmos.
I’ve heard this flick referred to a combo of Carnival of Souls meets David Lynch and that’s overreaching. Insidious has neither sensibility, but rather a TV movie’s feel with tired old genre’s tricks and clichés, none of them scary or amusing just deadpan and lifeless.

Insidious looks cool. There was about one minute total in this running time of ingenuity the rest was just bad ideas made to look good. Wan's camera likes to slowly capture vacant parts of the frame, while the soundtrack uses every creaky door and ticking clock at its disposal. When the father/son bonding time comes through an astral plane portal this is where the movie could have gone all “Altered States mind-trippy” but the astral projection world lacks any imaginative fear and or surrealism. Instead of opening the doors to creative imagery we just get sucked into another riff in a juxtaposed haunted house. Go figure. Inside resides the main demon who looks he’s wearing a Darth Maul Halloween mask prancing around the Jeepers Creepers monster’s lair as he plays Tiny Tim’s “tiptoe through the tulips” (kinda scary).
Byrne does an adequate job as the mom tormented by ghosts. Shaye (the raunchy landlady in Something About Mary) seems like the only one who knows what this movie is about. And Wilson had me wondering if he is really an actor at all. He’s the same guy in every movie. From The Watchmen, Hard Candy and Lakeview Terrace - all I see is a suburban white guy with no depth or range. By far the scariest part was the camera zooming in on Barbara Hershey’s seemingly botched plastic surgery creepily exposed under the green hues of Wan’s Saw-lensed camera.
I think the man problem maybe isn’t with the movie it’s with me. I have a hard time getting scared so if it’s anything I’ve ever seen before or has nothing original to offer I am looking at my watch. Please can’t some film out there scare me?
Insidious didn’t have to have “haunting” in the title to suck. The mere fact that it’s a haunted house flick with no redeeming originality let it suck all on its own.

Insidious
Starring Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Lin Shaye, Ty Simpkins, Barbara Hershey
Directed by James Wan
1 ½ stars

Cruel and Unusual Punishment

Sucker Punch Lives up to its Title
by
Morgan P Salvo

Unfortunately Zack Snyder the guy who brought us the fast paced Dawn of the Dead redux and the intriguing Watchmen has softened to PG-13 territory. I went in to the widely anticipated Sucker Punch wondering, will this film deliver or not? The previews looked promising. The premise of catholic-school-meets-Victoria Secret girls fighting demons, dragons and kicking ass was somewhat appealing. Well, Sucker Punch not only doesn’t deliver, it’s a wretched mess. I can only assume the reason for its title is that it lands a roundhouse blow to the back of the audience’s skull to for not anticipating how incredibly lame it would be.

The extremely disingenuous plot unfolds in music video bravado. The entire opening set-up resembles MTV, as I half expected the titles in the corner to tell me which horrid rock band was doing “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)”.
Wrongfully locked away in an insane asylum orphanage, a young woman named Babydoll (an extremely pouty Emily Browning) retreats to two fantasy worlds: a brothel and dance therapy studio where a fantasy scenario is played out to imitate the nut-house high-jinks and her ‘Escape to Video Game Island’. She accesses the latter place by dancing (a feat we never see her do). As soon as she closes her big-lashed eyelids we are transported to a video game-type sword battle and/or shoot out. Determined to fight for freedom, she enlists four women – Rocket (Jena Malone), a lost soul, Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), a never explained brunette, snotty bitch Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish) and Amber (Jamie Chung) as background filler to try to escape the terrible phony fate that awaits them.
Parallel universe is a cool idea if played with correctly, if not it’s disastrous. This is not a dream within a dream etc. This is a futile attempt to tell three separate stories in an effort to interlace the plot. I can’t tell which of the three versions are the worst; the unbelievable reality, the insipid brothel version, or the hideously contrived video game battle sequences.
Then there’s the bad writing. This is Snyder’s first screenplay that resembles a graphic novel but without any real attempt at social commentary. It’s all action fluff. A stupid concept that’s unoriginal to the max, Sucker Punch lacks any spunk in a virtual sea of promising spunkiness. This flick also lacks any vampiness - the heroines are dressed in schoolgirl-ballerina-slut outfits intended to entice male fantasy but do not beguile as sexpot dancers or tough chick kick-ass fighters. Instead they emerge as inept hookers and vulnerable crybabies.

The production values are immensely artistic but the chorography of slow-mo acrobatics is just old hat at this point. Overexposed to the overused Matrix-like fight sequences, we have become numb to them. Sucker Punch suffers from blatantly attempting to impress. If a flick is going to go overboard with computer graphics, let it explode with originality. Here is list of things in Sucker Punch already done more than once in other flicks: Nazi zombies… check. Shiny glass-jaw fighting faceless robots …check. Man-in-machine rock ’em sock ’em robots…check. Big Japanese samurai warriors straight out of Kurosawa’s Kakgemusha… sorry, check. Really cool-looking fire breathing dragon…check. Doomsday timer-bomb on a train…check. Scott Glenn as a Zen master…wait, now that’s never been done before. Glenn dishes out fortune cookie wisdom to the orphan chicks like Karate Kid meets Charlie’s Angels.
SP has plenty of dull moments. The dialogue is atrocious, the characters never developed and the acting is as cardboard as it gets with the exception of Carla Gugino as Dr. Gorski rattling off a polish accent and Isaac Otis (the over acting king from the recent Robin Hood) hamming it up as Blue the pimp and/or head nurse depending on whatever plane of existence you choose.
There’s a ton of dreadful and ridiculously over-used cover songs, like “Tomorrow Never Knows”, “White Rabbit” and others from Bjork, Pixies, Stooges, and Queen. But the most radical and embarrassing is Blue and Dr. Gorski’s version of Roxy Music’s “Love is a Drug” over the credits.
With such a fresh look and the girls-in-prison concept at his disposal, Snyder drops the ball and makes one long, boring, high-tech ambush. Somewhere in here is a Russ Meyer flick dying to get out. I noticed that this was a “Cruel and Unusual” film production. I concur. Sucker Punch made me feel like I got punched in the brain. All the distracting action still can’t mask the stupidity

SUCKER PUNCH
Starring Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens, Jamie Chung, Oscar Isaac, Carla Gugino , Scott Glenn
Directed by Zack Snyder
Rated PG-13
1 ½ stars

Ignore the Silliness Enjoy the Ride

Prepare for good old fashioned popcorn-gorging entertainment
By Morgan P Salvo


Limitless plays havoc with the old adage that most people use just 10 to 20 percent their brain power. But what if the other 80 or 90 percent were suddenly made available? Broke, facing extreme writer’s block and rejected by his girlfriend, deadbeat New York writer Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper) is convinced that he has no future. Things get real different when a slick shifty figure from his past introduces him to NZT, a new synthetic drug that enhances mental abilities. Immediately after popping a clear little pill Eddie’s neurons get turbocharged. Stoked on NZT, Eddie rises to the top of the financial world. He attracts the attention of tycoon Carl Van Loon (Robert De Niro) who believes he can use Eddie to make a fortune. He also suffers from terrible withdrawal side-effects, a dwindling supply and bad decisions (including Russian mob involvement) that threaten to destroy any chance of Eddie's future.

Despite its many plot holes and mistakes (the most glaringly ridiculous scene involves ice skates) Limitless is way better than I thought it would be. From the camera–trick psychedelic beginning to the creepy and illuminating sense we get while watching Eddie under the influence, it’s more about enjoying the ride of this flick. Limitless is a paranoid thriller blended with science fiction, propelled by doses of satire. The flick is narration heavy and tends to take the story a little too lightly but most of the time it works. Then of course there’s that darn Meth metaphor. NZT looks a lot like speed: Eddie shows signs of bug eyes, dilated pupils, paranoia, no appetite, and stays up for days. There’s also a warranted amount of delusions of grandeur when Eddie states “I wasn’t high or wired, just clear” or “I don’t have delusions of grandeur, I have a recipe for grandeur”. I bet Charlie Sheen says that to himself all the time.
Limitless rockets alongside Eddie’s progress with a four-digit IQ, ability to learn to play the piano in seven hours, finesse the stock markets, summon lost memories in photographic detail, and speak fluent languages in minutes. As the side affects erupt Eddie skips thru time with no recollection or memory allowing thriller mystery elements to take hold and keeps you guessing as to where this will all end.
Adapted from Alan Glynn's novel The Dark Fields by screenwriter Leslie Dixon and directed with dizzying aplomb by Neil Burger (the Lucky Ones and The Illusionist,). Parodying our zombified short attention span and narcotized age, Burger ingeniously plays the material for straight thrills. Using every camera trick in the book the gimmickry pays off: Quick cuts, fast flashbacks (reminiscent of Requiem for a Dream), fish-eye lens, wide angles, time-lapse zooms, the hits just keep coming.
Acting is sketchy throughout. Cooper (in a constant state of hip five o’clock shadow) shows decent acting chops and proves a range that goes light-years beyond the Hangover, flashing his baby blues and effectively keeping us intrigued as to what’s next.
As girlfriend Lindy, Abbie Cornish is simply adequate due to what little script she has to work with. Andrew Howard’s Russian mobster lowlife creep is disturbingly menacing providing a few of the more intense moments. DeNiro (looking super old) is just not believable as a ruthless corporate raider. His slime-ball big-wig CEO intellect is supposed to be searing, although aside from one decent monologue he seems to be sleepwalking through yet another role.
There’s a moment in The President’s Analyst where in James Coburn as the President’s therapist realizes that he possesses special knowledge due to his role. His face in the elevator when he thinks everyone is out to get him is priceless, his paranoia justified. Limitless infuses lots of those kinds of moments. As Eddie’s path progresses he is constantly looking over his shoulder to see who wants what he has, be it the super itelligence or just the drug itself.

This mystery action thriller really keeps you riveted instead of repulsed. Updated yet old fashioned movie going entertainment, Limitless showcases the pitfalls of addiction, finical corruption, backstabbing lawyers and clandestine deals. And with all the twists and turns it doesn’t take a genius or someone on NZT to put the pieces together. This is the first movie in a long time that causes the audience to root for someone to take drugs. NZT seems great… you can impress everyone, make lots of money and score tons of sex. Still my favorite part was it seems to be a cure for writer’s block. Even with all the pro drug influence Limitless is a cautionary tale about the over emphasis of the pharmaceutics in our culture and the overachieving quest for wealth and material goods in our society while still toying with The Man with the Golden Arm and/or The Lost Weekend-type addiction theories. But in the end the main point of the movie is that after being immersed in murder, corruption, financial power and scandal, where else can a smart guy like Eddie go but politics.

Limitless
Starring Bradley Cooper, Abbie Cornish, Robert DeNiro, Andrew Howard
Directed by Neil Burger
Rated R




2 ¾ stars

Normal Embarrassing People

Insurance Convention offers indie quirkiness in top form
by
Morgan P Salvo
 

Miguel Arteta (Chuck and Buck, Youth in Revolt) deserves credit for being the only director to yank out a decent performance from Jennifer Aniston in the last decade with The Good Girl. With Cedar Rapids he provides a straightforward story about a fictional Wisconsin town, Brown Valley, and the heroic turn of its dweeby hesitant insurance man, Tim Lippe (Ed Helms). Lippe is sent to Cedar Rapids to represent his company at an insurance convention, and soon finds himself mixed up with three convention veterans and the life lessons that ensue

Simplistic to the hilt with real-life scenarios, Rapids is not a wacky comedy, but a heartfelt look at doing the right thing no matter how messed up things get. Like in Fargo, amidst the small time wheeling and dealing we find small town corruption (without a wood chipper).

Arteta’s unassuming style gives the actors room to amuse, keeping the mood as intimate. The hilarity comes out of normalcy thanks to spot-on performances and a screenplay that is something truly original. Rapids is often not funny, just realistically cringe inducing. The truthfulness renders a character study of real people who are not embarrassed of themselves, making us want to jump in the screen and explain to them how freaking ridiculous they are.

This top notch cast really delivers the goods. Helms (The Office/Daily Show), in a terrific performance, eschews comedy “play-acting” and really captures the spirit of a gullible dope. An overweight John C. Reilly as Dean Ziegler is a big lovable lug, all foul mouth and heart. Isiah Whitlock Jr. as Ronald Wilkes “Ronimo”, maintains an even keel ironically doing impersonations from The Wire (on which he was Senator Clay Davis who said “sheee-it” a lot.) Anne Heche is Joan, the tough yet vulnerable saleswoman and Alia Shawkat is Bree the hooker, with heart of gold and drug connections. Stephen Root (Office Space) is the conniving boss along with head honcho insurance guru Kurtwood Smith (Robocop’s super villain/ That 70’s Show). Sigourney Weaver, showing no signs of plastic surgery, is Lippe’s MILF ex-grade school teacher/love interest.

From dork to "Insurance Man, Super-Hero" Helms’ metamorphosis contains some subtle similarities to Sharlto Copely’s in District 9 (though not as impressive). Lippe’s innocence is refreshing to all he encounters and somewhat contagious. This flick offers a smidgen of introspection that allows us all to take a look at ourselves to find the good---might not be much but it’s there. Exposing a slice of heartland America, Rapids is scathing commentary in its own right. At one point the boss informs him to go out and make the insurance team proud, “I always thought you would go places and then somehow you just didn’t.” Well this flick might not go far but it certainly covers a lot emotional high points in its short running time.

Cedar Rapids  Starring Ed Helms, John C Reilly, Anne Heche, Isiah Whitlock Jr.
Directed by Miguel Arteta
Rated R
3 Stars

Love Means never having to say you’re adjusted

Stirring up a Melting Pot of Genres in Twilight Zone Fashion
by
Morgan P Salvo


The Adjustment Bureau is a sci-fi action thriller, love story and parable all rolled into one and though not my favorite movie by any means, writer/director George Nolfi combines all the elements with equal parts to tell a somewhat balanced story.
Based on Phillip K Dick’s short story “Adjustment Team” originally published in 1954, about an insurance salesman who learns that he's a puppet on a string controlled by a clandestine organization. Writer/director George Nolfi (penned The Bourne Ultimatum) has made considerable…ahem… adjustments to the story, though it looks like the business suits (especially the hats) have remained in the same era. This time around the central character is politician David Norris (Matt Damon) whose aspirations are shattered mysteriously at the last moment. The plot takes a while to settle in as it has many facets to set up: the political goings-on of Norris, the out-of-nowhere love interest Elise (Emily Blunt) and finally the mysterious figure heads in the Adjustment Bureau. We meet Harry (Hurt Locker’s Anthony Mackie) and then Richards (Mad Men’s John Slattery) as the somewhat reluctant agents of the Adjustment Bureau. It doesn’t take long to figure out that these guys are angels come down from their “boss” The Chairman (God) to ensure certain people’s destinies do not waver from the path by making tiny “adjustments”. In other words, don’t mess with the future.
That’s where the love interest between David and Elise comes into play—will their immediate smitten love for each stand the test of time? Elise and David are never supposed to meet again, but they do, and that's when things get complicated
Relying on a mandatory Hollywood make-out montage, some unnecessary past-revealing monologues and a minimum of goopy sappy dialogue, this flick is brought to life by Damon and Blunt’s onscreen chemistry. Their first connection is unbelievably charming and that’s how their chemistry plays put the entire movie. They seem to have a natural rapport fitting them to a tee and the core of Adjustment Bureau is based on their undying love for each other. Yes, this is definitely cornball country.

Nolfi has a deft hand in setting up intrigue and romance keeping the film balanced between sincerity and self-conscious amusement. Right when it feels like an all too normal love story it gets all Twilight-Zoney. There’s also an element of dark comedy bordering on slapstick when the semi-oblivious angels show their vague importance by having special powers and their ineptitude when they cannot. Rain and water shield humans from the Bureau’s visibility. And they are left in the dark by The Chairman who doesn’t fill them in on everything. “Chairman always has a plan. We only see part of it”.

So it’s not hard to fool the clueless angels. And they have to wear a fedora (no explanation here, they just do) as they race through the city via doors or portals to different locations faster than a speeding subway. When the Bureau seems to be at a stand till they call in the super angel Thompson (Terence Stamp) to play hardball. Stamp’s monologue about why the angels must intercede in the people on earth’s existence is a silly history lesson about how mankind cannot do well on its own reminding us of the Black Plague World War I & II. This might make sense in written short story form but as a scolding monologue it falls flatBut with all of the plot’s gaping loopholes one must concede that there’s no dramatic conflict unless things go wrong. The Bureau is responsible for a few comic misguided blunders as they try to thwart true love.

Considering his political leanings, it’s funny seeing Matt Damon as an everyman politician running for the senate seat in New York, yet he comes off believable. A hilarious scene is seeing him in character being taunted by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. Blunt is compellingly cool as a strong-yet-leery woman with a great sense of humor. Mackie shows heartfelt vulnerability while Slattery keeps all his smarmy douche bag tendencies intact. Stamp’s supreme command of the screen (as always) conveys stoic sternness as the perfect ultimate foil for these lovebirds’ plight thumbing their collective nose at destiny.
Adjustment Bureau touches on the theme that one can obtain their dreams and become successful if guilt tripped into it and toys with theories of free will overriding destiny.
Bureau will probably please a lot of people but for its breakneck pace I found it a bit too conventional. I was hoping the ending would go another direction. This film is actually a valiant effort to stay fresh and interesting but ultimately a love story. Bureau doesn’t need much help, just a little adjusting to.

The Adjustment Bureau
Starring Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Terence Stamp, Anthony Mackie, John Slattery
Directed by George Nolfi
Rated PG-13
2 ½ stars

Nicolas Cage—STOP making movies!

Once again Cage is the odd man out
By Morgan P Salvo

Wild at Heart, Raising Arizona, Birdy… these are the films that come to mind when I think back when Nicolas Cage was good. Maybe it all started with Captains Corelli’s Mandolin when I realized maybe Cage wasn’t cut out for “mood pieces”. Now all he does is somber monotone renditions in flicks that give me a bad mood. I first noticed it in movies I thought I would like: Snake Eyes, 8mm and Gone in Sixty Seconds (it became clear that I should have left the theater in 30 seconds).
Sure he’s had some money problems but when you are one of the biggest box office stars why keep making crap after crap after crap? Going completely off the edge of “paycheck movies” there seems to always be a Nicolas Cage movie happening somewhere. There’s always one in theaters, on cable, coming soon on DVD, being shot right now or in post-production. Leaving Las Vegas gave him a well deserved academy award but after that the only movies that come to mind nearing redemption are Spike Jonze /Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation and (just barely) Matchstick Men. There’s always an actor who works too hard, like say Michael Caine or Samuel L Jackson. They’re bound to show up in a bad movie once in a while. With Cage they are all bad. But in Caine or Jackson’s case you can see the glint in their eyes of “yes I am doing schlock.” With Cage the eyes have gone dead.
Which brings me to Drive Angry --- Angry is actually pretty good. Everyone (Burke, Fichtner and Heard) are having a field day hamming it up and being super cartoony... yep, everyone but Cage. His take on the somber monotone serious dude does not play out AT ALL with the rest of the movie. If the filmmakers had chosen anyone else (with the exception of Justin Timberlake) this would have been a four star movie. Over the top action, titillating gore, violence, sex, nudity and one scene that incorporates intercourse and gunplay at the same time…very original and very funny.
Director Patrick Lussier ( My Bloody Valentine) has taken all the things I have been bitching about that was wrong with 3D and made them inventive imaginative and visually stunning. Everything flies at you: bullets, axes, car parts, body parts, flames, blood. You name it, it whizzes right at you. There’s one scene in particular that is true genius; the windshield in the foreground with a bullet hole and a moon refection superimposed with a flashback/surreal dream sequence in the middle and Cage’s glaring face in the background exhibits pure inventive 3D art form brilliance. And like in Bloody Valentine when you’re in the diner, you feel like you are in the freaking diner. Angry is a painstakingly hilarious cheesy homage to 70’s movies with muscle cars and a satanic cult. The throwaway plot is beyond stupid but that’s what makes it so much fun, and it would be an all-out blast if buzz-kill Cage wasn’t in it sauntering around striking poses and acting like he doesn’t know where he is.
I have gone on record that every movie I see Cage in is just more proof that it’s virtually impossible for him to act anymore. My theory as to why/how Cage turned bad is that he goes into certain contraptions before going in front of a camera. One is a “personality extractor” that leaves him befuddled and forlorn. Another device is a “charisma vacuum” that sucks the life out of any feeling he might emote. Last is a “laser-beam acting-talent-eradicator”. One theory I like is that he is like Samson; once his hairline receded he lost his power. Now relying on insanely weird hair hats he pushes onward.
In the last couple of years we’ve been treated or devastated by Cages’ long list of films not to mention the hideous acting. Long ago his wacky hangdog spiel and weird take on things worked (Peggy Sue got Married or Vampire’s Kiss) and his moderately good stabs as action hero— Face Off, Con Air and The Rock seemed like obvious phases. But he never grew out of them. Now Cage churns out B-movie disasters like Bangkok Dangerous, Season of the Witch, Two National Treasure movies, Knowing, The Wicker Man, Ghost Rider and Next (possibly the worst movie ever made with his performance ranking as the worst of all time)
When all is said and done Cage had the ability and still has the face to do interesting work but his extreme lack of talent doesn’t just materialize in his choices of films but also manifests itself in his choice of acting styles.I think the main problem is we all still want to like Nicolas Cage—he just won’t let us.
But by all means see Drive Angry, Cage cannot single handedly destroy a movie this good but he tries.

Drive Angry
Starring Nicolas Cage, William Fichtner Amber Heard Billy Burke
Directed by Patrick Lussier
Rated R

3 ½ stars