Directed by Patrick Lussier. Starring Nicolas Cage, Amber Heard, William Fichtner.

Sex, violence, threatening 3-D, the devil, a sexy babe and badass Nic Cage in a tribute to exploitation films and all things wild and weird.

So you’re either gonna hate this film or love it. Cause it ain’t everybody’s cup of molten lava. With a film title like Drive Angry, a much in debt Nic Cage and the promise of ‘3-D’ if you’re going in expecting Oscar material (it is Oscar season after all) you’re gonna be bummed out for sure.

Okay, so Nic Cage plays John Milton, a bad man — a bad dead man, actually — who tears out of the fires of hell to avenge the death of his daughter and kidnap of his granddaughter by a vile cult leader Jonah (Billy Burke) and his posse of maniacal followers. Hot on his pursuit is The Accountant (Fichtner), the devil’s henchman who must retrieve Milton. He’s simply awesome, is what he is.

The very thin but very sexy Amber Heard and her muscle car team up with Milton on his quest thus ratcheting up the adrenalin. There’s a scene with Nic Cage blowing the brains off of Jonah’s henchmen while having sex with a bar waitress that is really interesting (beware of several censor cuts in the film though).

Fichtner’s role as the cool (ironic) customer from hell meticulously and sometimes murderously pursuing the escapee is wonderful. He’s as cold as the T-1000 in Terminator Judgment Day with a little black wit thrown in. Cage is his usual mad, insane self and you wonder how long he can keep doing roles like this.

Sure there’s loads of shooting, catfights, people being run over and bullets that’ll come flying at you. There are places where it looks a bit cheap and this film has B-movie written all over it but that’s more for effect and being true to the genre.

In an age of remakes, based-on-a-true-story Oscar hopefuls and unoriginal TV series knock-offs, this film at least has an original storyline going for it.