Rating: 
There have been plenty of comparisons between this movie and “Grind House”, and deservedly so. Both films feature classic American muscle cars, hot babes, and over-the-top violence. But where “Grind House” went for a very 60′s feeling production value – more of an homage – “Drive Angry” is much more contemporary in approach.
The basic storyline is that Nicolas Cage has come back from the dead to save his infant daughter from the leader of a Satanic cult. He’s being pursued by an agent of Hades called “The Accountant” and along the way he is accompanied by a hot babe, named “Piper.” Pretty familiar story.
Surprisingly, what makes this movie work isn’t Cage or the cars. Not that the cars aren’t awesome. You don’t get to see or hear a ’69 Charger at full throat these days. In fact, there is a respect for the cars that runs through the movie. Early on, The Accountant is interrogating Piper’s boyfriend; the boyfriend…
Rating:
Well, the critics finally got one right. This isn’t a bad movie, but it could have been so much more. The first sign of trouble is that the opening 5 or 6 minutes is a voice-over of the lead-in to the story. That rarely bodes well. Sure, this is a PG Disney flick, but the average teenager grew up on TV and can assimilate a back-story pretty well through even the crudest of flashbacks.
OK, so the story is that Cage is one of Merlin’s original apprentices and there’s a wicked witch sorceress who wants to destroy the world with an army of the undead and it’s been going on for 1000′s of years and all that time Cage has been looking for the person who could wear Merlin’s ring and take up the quest. The present-day “hero” is a physics nerd at NYU who’s into Tesla Coils … and he’s still in love with the girl he knew…
Rating:
“Okay you c*nts … Let’s see what you can do now!”
When I first saw the trailers for KICK-ASS I thought it was going to be a cute action-comedy flick. Nicolas Cage would be a quirky crime-fighter and all kinds of weird people would get into the act as crime-fighters. Once again, a studio did a horrible job representing a great move. With a bigger name cast this film would get awards.
The story centers around an average high-school kid who dreams of being a super hero. Fighting crime. Saving people. (“Jesus, guys, doesn’t it bug you? Like thousand of people wanna be Paris Hilton and nobody wants to be Spiderman.”) All of that. He has no girlfriend routinely gets his lunch-money stolen. So he decides “why not try it” and buys himself a green scuba-diving suit and some fighting clubs. In his first encounter he gets his ass-kicked (and stabbed). The resulting nerve…
Wow. Once again Hollywood’s marketing campaign is completely misleading. The promotions for this movie played up some of the snappy lines so it looked more like a comedy-drama. Cage has done a few such movies lately, so I guess the studio was playing to that perception.
Well that perception is eliminated at the end of the credits. With a bullet, as they say. Literally. This is not a comedy. But it’s not dead-serious like The Constant Gardener either. That is to say the subject matter is serious, but the characters have a warmth and depth that makes it watchable. And the wit they display is the kind of wit you’d expect from a salesman.
