Review of Drive Angry (2011) by Shiira — 06 Mar 2011

Sacha Baron Cohen's "Bruno" was not your typically passive moviegoing experience. The follow-up to the comparatively gentle "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" was confrontational art masquerading as a mainstream film.

It contained moments of stupefying audacity that were both simultaneously puerile and archly ideological, and without fail, left audience's jaws on the floor due to the no-holds-barred approach the provocative comedian used to finesse his subjects into exposing themselves, their true selves.

The worst of the bunch, hands down, the ugliest of the ugly Americans, has got to be the stage mother at the faux casting call interview, who doesn't have the decency to, at the very least, wince or do a double take, after already having failed to get that the joke is on her, when Cohen goes over his character's purported project, a photo shoot featuring a Nazi Germany crematorium scenario, in which her baby is either going to be the SS officer, or the Jew.

Not in the same league as the holocaust, but nevertheless, bad in its own right, "Drive Angry 3D" surrounds its very young child around devil worshipers, whose leader, Jonah King(Billy Burke), plans on sacrificing with a ceremonial knife, in the midst of fast cars, fast women, and a whole lot of violence.

If memory serves me right, the baby doesn't even have a name; its protector, John Milton(Nicholas Cage), couldn't be bothered with learning the name of his slain daughter's only child's name. It's just as well that the infant go nameless, because if the baby had an identity and been allowed to be more than a prop, the jeopardization of the dead man's granddaughter would have been all the more offensive.

By remaining, what is essentially a live-action cartoon, the film's immature trappings desensitizes us to the creative bankruptcy of its exploitative narrative. It doesn't attempt to manipulate our feelings with gratuitous close-ups of the young girl.

In fact, the moviegoer never does get a good look at her. She's just a body wrapped in a blanket. It's not the filmmaker's priority to make us care about anything, least of all, a child's welfare. Any semblance of urgent paternalism on John's part to safeguard his blood's blood from Satanic ritual gets neutralized by the film's preoccupation with spectacle, in which the twin pornographies(sex and **** violence) with its prevalence for motivational unilateralism, has a reductionist effect on the protagonist's role since his heroic actions are compromised by digressive acts, impediments to forward momentum that suggest a hidden agenda.

This aesthetic of cross-purposes comes to the fore in the diner/motel sequence where sex and violence join forces in an emphatic shoot-'em-up so over-the-top, it suggests that one night stands played an important role in the damned man's decision to escape from hell.

In a race against time to hunt down the kidnappers, John Milton finds time to have dangerous sex with a waitress, which belies the time sensitivity of the mission at hand. As a result, "Drive Angry 3D" has no urgency, no suspense, no drive.

At Smithfalls, an abandoned Louisiana prison, site of the human sacrifice, John Milton, in his capacity as the hero, kills Jonah with the Godkiller, but not without causing a lot of collateral damage, in which he takes down the cult leader's followers, who should be rehabilitated, not murdered.

This happy ending, the recovery of his granddaughter, epitomizes his callous disregard for extraneous people, akin to the incident back at that motel, where the waitress' life, hanging in the balance amidst heavy gunfire, doesn't stand in his way of achieving a(wink, wink, nudge, nudge) "happy ending" of another, euphemistic sort.

After the mayhem dies down, John hands the girl over to Piper(Amber Heard), his foul-mouthed partner on this highway to hell, who doesn't seem all that thrilled about being a mother. Right about then would have been a good time for a close-up of the baby in an effort to help transform this human prop into flesh and blood, who is referred to("Your daughter's death will pale to what happens to the baby," said Jonah), but never spoken to.

Piper says nothing. Some mother. Just like the one who signed off on "Drive Angry 3D".