DRIVE ANGRY is a bad film. There really is no other way to say it. Nicholas Cage apparently stopped trying to be good a long time ago, but there is very little else in the production that even manages to rise to his listless, bored, uninterested performance. If we were being generous, we could label his Milton as taciturn or laid back, but he is barely one step away from comatose. Cage can't find it in himself to summon up a single emotion in the film's entire running time. This is possibly because he has sold his soul at some time in the past and DRIVE ANGRY is his punishment.

Amber Heard, on the other hand, tries her best to inject her basic hot chick sidekick with some sense of personality, but she is barely given anything more to do than to look great, get saved by Milton and have the plot explained to her. Her game attempt to take this nonsense seriously is one of the few saving graces of the film. It's certainly not enough to save the movie. William Fichtner clearly also read the script and decided to treat the whole thing as a pantomime, with himself as the hissable, overacting villain. He gives the impression of having a ball, which is more than anyone else is. Except possibly Billy Burke, who is also overplaying his villain, though not quite to the same extent.

The threadbare plot is one long chase, interspersed with periodic shootouts and explosions. The action, though , is as dreadful as the rest. Director Patrick Lussier doesn't seem to have made up his mind whether he is making a serious action film or a parody. The scene where Milton takes out a dozen bad guys without ever dropping his bottle of whisky or the naked blonde attached to his lower regions is both preposterous and awful and sets the tone for what follows. Cars fly through the air in defiance of the laws of physics and bullets spray all over the place without ever getting close to the heroes.

This is backed up by some terrible effects work. It is true that the film was made for the 3D market and so will be designed to be hurled at the audience, but that really is no excuse for effects of this low quality. The titles are forgiveable for that reason, but not the effects.

We'd like to be able to say DRIVE ANGRY is bad enough to be entertaining, but it doesn't manage that. It's just not good.