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I've said forever that while I don't particularly have anything against Nicholas Cage, I can't stand his agent. For the longest time, if you saw that he was in a movie, it was the most obvious possible sign that that movie was a completely unwatchable piece of garbage. I actually really liked Kickass a lot though, and Drive Angry here comes on the high recommendations of a pretty trustworthy lot when it comes to this sort of thing, so let's see what we've got. Also have I mentioned that apparently Nicholas Cage bought a house around here like a year or two ago? It's like, a ten minute walk from here apparently. Which may account for some of the weirdly frequent helicopter traffic around here, maybe.
We start out with some fairly weird narration while the main character drives a car off a ramp to escape from hell. OK, that's a good way to start a movie. Pretty nice looking version of hell too. It's like a red tinted version of the last 10 minutes of Escape from New York. Anyway, with no real transition at all from that, we have him chasing down this truck full of dudes, using hiss badassmobile to just kinda... trip the truck, flipping it end over end, and then starts blowing the limbs off the occupants with a shotgun. Again, promising first impressions here. Then he gets a little info out of them, blows up their truck, and we get around to having the title pop up.
Now we've got some waitresses with bad inconsistent southern accents chitchatting at a diner. So odds are nothing's going to explode for at least a whole minute here, that's no fun. Anyway, some predicable stuuff later, the waitress whose accent is way worse and is our very obvious love interest gets in her properly snazzy car, which you know is going to be important because the vanity plate is the movie's title. Nicholas Cage is all WANT CAR, and follows her, fixing it when it conveniently breaks down, and gets a ride from her. And oh hey! It's that guy who looks and sounds an awful lot like Christopher Walken but isn't. Hey DVD sleeve, who is this guy again? William Fichtner. Also, the DVD sleeve actively avoids mentioning how this movie totally started out with Nicholas Cage escaping from hell by car. Oh hey! Been a while, but look! Boobs by paragraph 3! Girl here arives home to find a friend of hers sleeping with her husband after quitting her waitress job, and punches her out on the front lawn. Fat creepy neighbor who might be the same creepy fat guy from Gamer happens to be walking by and takes a picture because hey, how often do you see a naked unconscious girl on your neighbor's lawn? She tries to punch her husband out too, but he's pretty tough, so he kinda wins, but then Nicholas Cage shows up to deliver a proper Man Punch and knock him out.
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Now we have a flashback to his here evil dude who is presumably, if not The Devil, at least A Devil, murdering our hero's wife and baby. Oh and it was her fiance that was Man Punched. Anyway though, yeah. The blurb totally denies the whole hell thing. "Career criminal Milton breaks out of prison to pursue the cult member who killed his daughter and kidnapped her baby... and is in turn chased by a serial killer who is determined to catch him before he can find redemption. Aiding Milton in his quest is Piper, a comely waitress who supplies him with a muscle car..." OK, I wasn't going to quote that much of it, but apparently I was wrong about BOTH characters being married, and I can't resist pointing out when someone actually uses the term "comely" without irony. Anyway though, yeah, the blurb denies all supernatural stuff, and nothing about the trailers for this said anything about it either but... it's not a secret at all in the movie itself. We start out with him driving a car out of freaking hell, he has a constantly smoking ornate box full of super posh guns, and the badguy chasing him clearly has obvious magical powers. OK, he just super strength tossed Fiance there across the room, Matrix dodged a baseball bat, broke it and half and through half of it through his shoulder, then the other half through his eye, then he goes outside to talk to the police, flips this Ancient Roman Coin, which, coming up heads, magically transforms into an FBI badge to flash at them. Presumably tails and he'd just have killed them. And he talks all weird. So... why the elaborate ruse pretending this is a way less interesting movie?
Also, gee, we're really going the nudity route here. Our heroes have taken refuge in a motel for the moment, on route to some plot point. In the next room, some girl who I at first through was, well, might as well just say Piper since I went and quoted actual names here is having her toenails painted by some random nude guy, and getting distracted by the shockingly graphic sex going on in the next room between Milton there and... oh. Just some other random blond girl. He's fully clothed, she's uh... more visibly nude than should be possible. It's like one of those Gun Buster just-so camera angles that let you see nipples by looking through the corner of someone's sleeve or something. Anyway, some badguys break in to to kill him with a crowbar, sledgehammer, axe, and shotgun... and machete... and cattle prod. OK, let me just finish listing these weapons, then I'll get back to what I'm watching here. Sickle... and Piper there charges in at some point to kill the last one with a hoe. So yeah, all these guys burst in one by one but with no gap between one dying and the next attacking, while our hero is simultaneously banging this random extra nude girl, swigging from a bottle of whiskey, smoking a cigar, wearing shates and a full suit, dodging around, and firing his gun behind his back. This is actually the third movie I've seen do this sort of thing. The first was Shoot'em Up which not nearly enough people ever saw. It's a really awesomely over the top action movie with weird casting, and the main character kills multiple people with carrots.
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Anyway, we've kinda still got a fight scene going on here. Except now it's with cops who have shown up. One apparently seems to recognize him, but we aren't going to elaborate on that now, because Piper shoots the other cop before he can shoot Milton, causing him to shoot recognizey cop instead. They then hop back into the car to chase after A Devil, with Not Walken in close pursuit. Literally, he's ramming them now. Then politely gesturing tol roll down the window. Both Milton and Not Walken seem to suffer no ill effects from being shot with shotguns, so now it's time to break out the totally awesome Hell Gun. Seriously, this thing is like something out of Hellsing. It's SUPER ornate, stored in this smouldering case, has 5 barrels, and fires bullets with Latin inscriptions that have flaming halos around them when in mid-flight. All that's missing is telling us they're made from holy artifacts and filled with depleted uranium.
Now here's some awesome old guy, come to supervise the crime scene investigation, and some random stoners finding the upended car after the awesome hell gun caused Not Walken to drive off a bridge to evade it. Not Walken then basically admits to being the grim reaper, telling them he'll be back to see them when they're 71, and in three months respectively. He's a pretty chipper and laid back fellow really. Oh and we've got some exposition about how A Devil apparently really is just a regular ol' Satanic cultist, with a nice following. Here's a whole church full of them, getting ready to sacrifice a baby, all of whom are secretly packing guns to point at Milton as he enters to stop this. Oh and I guess the baby here is his grandchild, set to be sacrificed in 2 days on the full moon to open the gates of hell... moreso than how far open they must already have been to just kinda drive a car through'em earlier.
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So anyway yeah, we've got a bit of a confrontation here, Milton makes fun of the cult leader to his cronies, causing him to kill one to save face, then he demands his grandkid back, which he replies to by shooting him in the eye. Which naturally doesn't kill him because he didn't use an awesome magic hell gun to do it, but Piper is slow on the uptake and freaks out like he's dead. So she gets dragged off by cultists, and Cult Leader here taunts Milton by pointing out how everywhere he goes, he carries around his lucky cane made from his daughter's femur. Then the whole cult piles into their RV and leaves, except for these half dozen guys, left behind to bury Milton. They didn't get that memo either. So he kills them all in relatively short order, gets back into the awesome car, and puts some shades on to cover up his shot out eye, Terminator style.
So yeah, car chase/gunfight again. Meanwhile Piper there takes advantage of the distraction to beat up the whole trailer full of cultists. She's actually really good at being a competent fighty gal. I like when movies actually let the token girl thrown in by law actually do stuff without bragging about being a girl while doing so. She's just near-main-character competent and self-motivated. That's nice to see. I'm sad I have to point it out as an exception to the usual rule here. Also, someone just got totally splattered by a car while kneeling in the middle of the road firing a shotgun. Haven't seen that in an action movie since like... Robocop. Well, probably also in Tokyo Gore Police, but what doesn't happen in that?
Anyway, Milton's just about caught up, but suddenly remembers he's trying to rescue a baby here, and so his usual tactic of ramming vehicles off the road won't work here. Meanwhile, Piper takes out all the cultists within by herself, except the driver and leader, although she at least jams his pentagram pentagram in his chest. She then dives out back to the awesome car, which gets its engine shot up, so, no resolution just yet it seems. She tries to get some exposition out of him, particularly what with the totally not supposed to be alive after being killed like that. Oh and here's more awesome Not Walken Death, having a casual chat with a barely alive cultist back at the church. On seeing the pentagram branding on his shoulder, "Huh, what's that?" "It's a symbol of our dark pact with Satan." "You sure? I've never heard him mention you. So hey, why are you trying to kill Milton there anyway?" etc. Again, he's a really likeably carefree guy.
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Now here's some random tow-truck driver who happened to be one of Milton's pallbearers. He's mildly surprised to see him back from the dead, but basically the conversation goes- "Uh... you're dead. How are you standing there?" "I'm avenging my daughter." "OK." Then he gives them a lift and he regenerates his eye because, well, it's pretty noticeable and gross looking. The new eye's kinda weird looking, but hey. Surprisingly enough, he can't fix up their super awesome car, but fortunately, he just kinda happens to have two more awesome old muscle cars in perfect shape just sitting around. And a shotgun. He's just full on joining the party it seems. Milton doesn't want him to though, and he's all come on, please? Sadly, we're bound by the laws of movies though... although huh, they only take the one car. So I guess he can still show up later in the other one to save the day. Here's hoping. Also, we're overdue for a police chase, so here's another one of those.
Or I guess we're going to politely pull over o chat with the roadblock'o'cops And oh hey, here's Not Walken just casually cruising around in a tanker full of hydrogen blaring That's the Way I Like it and singing along... which kinda inadvertently rescues them. Or possibly advertently. Which my spellcheck doesn't accept as a real word, but yeah, that was apparently the plan. He does his coin badge thing to old competent cop, whose response is "... NO YOU'RE NOT!" Anyway, yeah, Not Walken tells one of the cops, who is also a cultist, to call the cop leader and tell them they've killed the main character. One assume, being death or at least some demon sent out to retrieve escapees from hell, that he'd really prefer to let our protagonist do that whole stopping the gates of hell from being thrown open thing before taking him back in. I mean, it's the sensible thing to do. Then he shows up to hold Piper there hostage and explain this. So now they have a nice casual chat. "So I've got to know, how did you walk out with the God Killer?" "I just walked in and took it." "Oh. Well, he's probably going to be pretty mad." He then goes on to explain that Satan isn't actually evil at all, he's just, you know, the warden of hell, and a really nice guy, and he really hates the image he gets when people try to sacrifice children in his name and stuff.
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So OK then, we'reall on the sme side, time to drive car off a ramp through a pentagram, onto some cultists, and then drive around in a flaming car killing cultists in a scene that actually seems like it's pulled out of the first episode of Venture Bros. Meanwhile, Not Walken and Piper are hanging back, some cultist attacks, she manages to get the Hell Gun away while he amusingly kills some guy saying he's going to live forever, but doesn't kill him with it because no seriously, he's a really nice guy and we're all basically on the same side here. So she runs off with it, possibly to kill steal the cult leader, and meanwhile, stuff explodes some more. Also, Cult Leader gets kicked in the neck some, then Milton gets shot in the back, beaten with the femur cane, Piper comes in, shoots at Cult Leader with the Hell Gun, misses, and... totally unexists some random goon... and the bulk of the cult RV too, because it's pretty epic and explodey when fired. Anyway, Cult Leader's al "Nothing of this earth can kill me!" Then Not Walken just kinda clears his throat and points at the Hell Gun there, which Milton uses to kill him, yielding a really hilarious head explosion and many other special effects. Then things pretty much wrap up predictably. Trucker shows up late to the party, Piper here's going to hang out with him having awesome adventures and raising Grandkid, and Milton is going to surrender peacefully and return to hell with Not Walken. After drinking whiskey from the skull of his defeated enemy. No seriously, he does that. Which he keeps as a souvenir. He also insists on driving the yet another awesome old car Not Walken summons out of nowhere to drive back into hell with, and points out that he's going to escape again later. "I'm looking forward to it."
So yeah. That was indeed a really surprisingly awesome movie. Mainly just because of surprise last minute amiable Death. I would like to see more from this particular creative team. I wouldn't even be apposed to a totally random and senseless sequel to this. Fight scenes actually were a little dull, but only compared to some really exemplary stuff I've seen recently, otherwise it had pretty much everything I ask for in a bizarre action movie. Plus some gratuitous nudity, which I generally ask not to be included with these things.
