Instead, moviegoers all across the country had to say it to theater owners. I’m sure a number of inebriated thrill seekers on the cheap found it to be ample entertainment, but these same people were probably lost by the movie’s may references to deities such as Anubis and Loki (when the film premiered, Roger Ebert pointed out that the film’s target audience would be lost on the John Milton reference — I’m pretty sure he was right). While it suggests that Lussier and Farmer were trying to be intelligent in their writing process, it’s entirely fathomable that they were merely trying to sound intelligent instead.
Or maybe it’s just Nic Cage’s dire delivery of the film’s dialogue. Why didn’t they cast Danny Trejo or Kurt Russell instead? It probably would have improved the finished product considerably.
And, frankly, for the record: there just wasn’t enough angry driving for a movie called Drive Angry in my opinion. There were times when they accelerated whilst being slightly annoyed. On occasion, they maneuvered through the surprisingly sparsely-populated roads featured in the film with a fairly-apprehensive bit of resentment at their command, but they really never drove what I would consider to be “angry” for the required amount of time that would make the film live up to the mass-quantity of livid vehicular operation as the film’s title suggests.
Drive Angry hits DVD (as well as Blu-ray and Blu-ray 3D, for those of you who are interested) via Summit Entertainment in a 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen presentation with 5.1 Dolby Digital soundtracks in English and Spanish, with optional very large subtitles available in both of those languages in case you want to verify that the actors are actually saying what you’re hearing.
Several special features are tacked-on with the DVD release, including an audio commentary with Patrick Lussier and Todd Farmer, two deleted scenes, and two featurettes on the making of the movie with cast and crew. While the enthusiasm that the cast and crew obviously possess within the disc’s selection of bonus materials is praiseworthy, it doesn’t change the fact that the movie fails on every count at being the modern cult flick it tries to be.
In short: it’s terrible — and that’s coming from a B-Movie fan, mind you!
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