Drive Angry (Blu-ray) (2011)

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General		Extras
Category	Action	More…-PIP Cast and Crew Interviews Featurette-Making Of-How to Drive Angry Featurette-Milton's Mayhem Deleted Scenes
Rating
Year Of Production	2011
Running Time	104:22
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Patrick Lussier
Studio Distributor	Warner Home Video	Starring	Nicolas Cage Amber Heard William Fichtner Billy Burke David Morse Todd Farmer
Case	Standard Blu-ray
RPI	?	Music	Michael Wandmacher

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English DTS HD Master Audio 5.1 German Dolby Digital 5.1 (640Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 5.1 (640Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 (640Kb/s) Portuguese Dolby Digital 5.1 (640Kb/s) Hungarian Dolby Digital 5.1 (640Kb/s) Polish Dolby Digital 5.1 (640Kb/s) Russian Dolby Digital 5.1 (640Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	1080p
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English for the Hearing Impaired German for the Hearing Impaired Italian for the Hearing Impaired Spanish Portuguese Croatian Czech Danish Finnish Hungarian Norwegian Polish Romanian Russian Swedish Turkish	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

     Drive Angry starts at full throttle with a chase and the shooting of three men in a pickup by John Milton (Nicolas Cage). It seems that Milton’s daughter and her husband have been murdered by satanic cult leader Jonah King (Billy Burke) and their baby daughter taken. In three days, at the next full moon, the baby is to be sacrificed in a rite that will bring the Devil to earth, and Milton needs to save the baby before then. The men in the pickup were cult members from whom Milton got a clue as to where the sacrifice is to take place.

     Setting out, Milton saves café waitress Piper (Amber Heard) from her abusive boyfriend and she comes along for the ride. But everyone is out to stop Milton: the cult members, the State police and a mysterious lone man in black known only as The Accountant (William Fichtner). As the mayhem, crashes and body count rises to a crescendo, Milton speeds on to a final confrontation with King that may just save the World, and the baby girl.

     There is nothing subtle about Drive Angry. It is loud, frenetic, and so over the top that it is in orbit. But it is impossible to dislike a film that includes a satanic cult, gory violence, severed limbs, explosions, crashes, muscle cars, sex and nudity and a heavy rock soundtrack. It can be gruesome, and deserves its R rating for “high impact violence and sex scenes”, but all the gore and violence, the crashes and explosions are so comic book like that it is impossible to take them seriously, and indeed the film doesn’t. This is a film which knows its audience, and goes for it relentlessly. There is a twist of sorts in Drive Angry that is not revealed until around the 50 minute mark, although there had been hints earlier and most viewers would have already worked it out: (SPOILER ALERT: highlight with mouse to read) Milton is in fact dead and has escaped from hell to return to Earth to avenge his daughter and save his granddaughter, and The Accountant has been sent by the Devil to bring him back. Much of the car action and crashes look good and are done for real, including the car flipping off the bridge. This is just as well because when CGI is used, for example in the climax, it is pretty dodgy and rather silly.

     During his long career Nicolas Cage has taken some quirky and interesting roles and made them memorable; he has an Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas (1996), and was nominated for Adaption in 2003 but lost out to Adrien Brody for The Pianist. In the mid-90s he was at his action hero apex with the wildly entertaining trio of The Rock (1996), Con Air and Face/Off (both 1997). Now it seems he will do almost anything for money, with a succession of films such as Ghost Rider (2007), Bangkok Dangerous (2008), Season of the Witch (2011), and now Drive Angry. In fact, Cage is not too bad in Drive Angry, although on autopilot. Amber Heard does enough to make Piper interesting although Billy Burke as King is too one-dimensional and not scary enough. William Fichtner is the most interesting; he is deadpan, has all the best lines and seems to be having a lot of fun.

     Drive Angry was made with 3D cameras and was released in theatres in the US as a 3D exhibit, where it sunk without a trace. There are indeed lots of 3D tricks in the film, with weapons, such as a hatchet, bullets in slow motion and explosion debris flying straight at the viewer. Like the film itself, they are not subtle.

     Drive Angry is not original, nor subtle. The film got indifferent reviews and, as noted, performed poorly at the box office. However, it never tries to be high art, just high octane, and here it succeeds admirably. It may be a guilty pleasure, but it is never dull or boring and if the genre is your thing I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Video

     Drive Angry is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, the original aspect ratio, in 1080p using the MPEG-4 AVC code.

     The print looks great. It is sharp and nicely detailed, with Cage’s grizzled features and every bit of blood and gore pristine. The colours have been manipulated and look washed out and slightly yellow, and not particularly deep or vibrant, but I guess that was the intention. Within this palate skin tones are natural. Blacks are rock solid, shadow detail great, contrast and brightness consistent. There was some minor ghosting, and aliasing on trees at one point as the cars sped past, but this was fleeting. Otherwise artefacts were absent.

     Subtitles are available in a large range of European languages.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

     Audio options are English DTS-HD MA 5.1, plus Portuguese, Czech, German, Spanish, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Russian Dolby Digital 5.1 (at 640 Kbps) and Turkish Dolby Digital 2.0.

     The English DTS- HD MA 5.1 is loud and aggressive, as befits a film of this sort. Dialogue is clear enough and centred. The surrounds rocked with engines and tires, explosions, guns, crashes and music. There were a number of panning effects as cars sped past or weapons of various sorts flew towards and past the viewer. The sub-woofer supported the engines, explosions and music. While this was a loud audio track there were sections of nice ambience, such as the crowd in the bar and grill, and it was nicely balanced across the sound stage giving a wonderful enveloping aural experience.

     The original score by Michael Wandmacher was backed by numerous heavy rock songs from the likes of Trooper, T. Rex, Easy Action and Unkle that supported the visuals very well.

     Lip synchronisation was fine.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Access Drive Angry Cast and Crew Insights

     An occasional PIP as the film plays. Consists of behind the scenes stills and footage, storyboards plus interviews with cast and crew, most, if not all, of which are in the How to Drive Angry featurette on this Blu-ray. Overs intentions, characters, cast, stunts.

How to Drive Angry (18:18)

     Almost an EPK but somewhat better. Cast and crew talk about making the film, including how the producers left them alone to make the film they wanted to, shooting with 3D cameras, the cast, and how they made the low budget go a long way in shooting the car stunts and crashes. Main contributions are from writer / director Patrick Lussier and co-writer Todd Farmer, actors Billy Burke, William Fichtner and Amber Heard, and production designer Nathan Amondson. Nicolas Cage is absent.

Milton’s Mayhem (9:25)

     A sort of action reel, this is a compendium of all the kills and mayhem perpetrated by the Nicolas Cage character; rather distasteful as it allocated scores to each kill and maiming.

Deleted Scenes (1:12)

    A few short extra scenes without context or comments.

     Region A US and Region B UK have both 3D and 2D releases; Australia also has the 3D and a double 3D Blu-ray with both Drive Angry and Ghost Rider 2 is to be released on 3 October 2012 . The US and UK releases (both 3D and 2D), in addition to the extras we have, get an audio commentary with writer / director Patrick Lussier and co-writer Todd Farmer that is reported to be pretty good, plus a trivia track and director’s commentary on the deleted scenes. On that basis, any other release wins over ours.

     It is impossible to dislike a film that includes a satanic cult, gory violence, severed limbs, explosions, crashes, muscle cars, sex and nudity and a heavy rock soundtrack. Drive Angry never tries to be high art, just high octane, and here it succeeds admirably. It may be a guilty pleasure, but it is never dull or boring and if the genre is your thing I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

     The Blu-ray looks good and the audio track is exceptional. Extras are OK, but we miss out on the audio commentary available elsewhere.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall