Instead of simply jumping into movie reviews, I try to start every column with a hook -- a paragraph which ties into the review and leads the story into the movie synopsis. These "hooks" typically deal with movie trends, current events, or how the movie to be reviewed ties into other movies. Sometimes I struggle to come up with these opening thoughts, but I always come through...until now. Drive Angry has me stumped. This movie presents me with so many ideas for an intro that I don't know where to begin. I guess that I could have written about smorgasbords, but that would have been way too stream of consciousness. So, I guess we'll just jump into the review.

Nicolas Cage stars in Drive Angry as John Milton, a mysterious and dangerous man. As the film opens, we see Milton gun down three men while asking them for information. From there, he ventures to a diner, where he meets a waitress named Piper (Amber Heard). Milton admires her car and asks her for a ride. After they leave, a well-dressed man calling himself The Accountant (William Fichtner) arrives, stating that he is looking for Milton. Once in Piper's car, Milton explains that he is looking for the man who kidnapped his daughter's baby. That man, Jonah King (Billy Burke), is the leader of a cult who think that the baby is the key to achieving their ultimate plan. As Milton drives cross-country, killing anyone who gets in his way, we learn that he has a very secret past and powers which go beyond this world.

If you aren't familiar with Drive Angry, don't be alarmed -- apparently you aren't the only one. Despite fairly heavy advertising, when the movie opened in February, it came in in 9th place for its opening weekend, bringing in a little over $5 million. With a reported budget of $50 million, that wasn't a good thing. Why did people avoid this movie? Was it due to Nicolas Cage overload? His Season of the Witch had just opened some seven weeks earlier and had made twice as much in its opening weekend. This can't be blamed on bad word-of-mouth, because essentially, no one went to see it. The issue must have been the marketing, because the ads that I saw didn't reflect what I had read about the film. But, I can't tell you how I would have marketed the movie, as Drive Angry wants to be several films at once, none of which are very good.

The mish-mash of storylines is reflected in the movie's uneven tone. Writers Patrick Lussier and Todd Farmer (who claim that the first draft is what was shot) clearly had no idea in what direction to take their ideas. So, we get a violent action movie, combined with a somewhat somber story of a grandfather seeking vengeance, combined with supernatural hokum. The movie comes from dark to playful to silly to completely over-the-top. There is a shoot-out in a hotel room which nearly defies description. This scene gives preposterous a bad name and looks like something which one would find in a wacky Hong Kong movie. While I can completely see what the makers of Drive Angry were trying to do in this scene, it just feels out of place in a big-budget Hollywood movie, and I found myself feeling a mix of weird emotions while watching it.

The mixture of stories and tones is also reflected in the acting. For once, Cage keeps it in check and never really does that thing where he freaks out and yells while his eye bulge. In fact, his performance may be too low key for this role. Amber Heard...well, I'm not sure what she was doing, but I didn't believe a word that she said. William Fichtner is playing one of those dapper, cool characters who can walk past an explosion without batting an eye. However, not unlike Cage, his lack of emotion hurts the character. Billy Burke, on the other hand, really gets into playing the crazy cult leader. The bottom line here is that everyone acts as if they are each in a different movie.

I can't call Drive Angry a complete train wreck (car wreck?) because the action sequences are nicely done, save for some weak green screen at times. Keep in mind that the movie was shot in 3D and presented that way theatrically, so we get a lot of things flying at us. However, outside of the action scenes, we are presented with a movie which for some reason tries too hard to be shocking and vulgar. Drive Angry actually has some interesting ideas, but I hope that the drivers have GPS, as this movie is all over the map.

Drive Angry makes on wonder if Nicolas Cage was intentionally trying to look like the singer for Nickelback on DVD courtesy of Summit Entertainment. The film has been letterboxed at 1.85:1 and the transfer is enhanced for 16 x 9 TVs. The image is sharp and clear, showing no intrusive grain and no defects from the source material. As noted above, the movie was shot in 3D (as opposed to most recent 3D movies which shot normally only to have the 3D effects created via computer afterwards.) Like most 3D movies, the image looks odd when shown in 2D. The picture is slightly dark and lacks in fine detail. However, despite not being in 3D, there is nice depth to the image. The colors look good, most notably reds. The DVD carries a Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track which provides clear dialogue and sound effects. This is an exceptional track as it brings us strong subwoofer effects which will have the walls rumbling with each explosion and car engine roar. Thankfully, this doesn't drown out the attention given to the front and center channels, which show a lot of detail. The surround sound effects are nicely done in the action scenes and when cars pass from the front speakers to the rear.

The Drive Angry DVD contains a handful of extras. We begin with an AUDIO COMMENTARY from Patrick Lussier and Todd Farmer. "How To: Drive Angry" (18 minutes) opens with the point that the makers of Drive Angry were given a budget and creative freedom to do what they wanted. The question is then asked "Why doesn't this happen more often?" Given the movie's box office, it will probably never happen again. The piece then takes a casual and candid look at some of the key scenes in the film, focusing on how things were shot and how the budget was best utilized to benefit the action. There is also a look at the cast and characters. "Milton's Mayhem" (9 minutes) is an odd little piece which condenses the action scenes down to one reel and offers a video game like scoreboard to calculate the damage done by Milton. The DVD contains two DELTED SCENES which run about 90 seconds and can be viewed with optional commentary. Both are quite short and the movie didn't miss them, although the second one does show a pretty cool car.