Drive Angry

A devilishly sleazy contribution to the vengeance genre, Drive Angry follows tormented murderer John Milton (Nicolas Cage), who's escaped from, uh, Hell. John Milton (yes, just like the 17th-century poet who wrote Paradise Lost is on the trail of satanic cult leader Jonah King (Billy Burke), who killed Milton's daughter and kidnapped his baby granddaughter with plans to ritually sacrifice the child at the next full moon. Milton has a short timeline to find King while being pursued by cultists and cops, as well as an unflappable mystery man calling himself The Accountant (William Fichtner), who's determined to return Milton to his rightful place among the dead. Amidst the carnage, Milton teams up with feisty waitress Piper (Amber Heard), driving her fiancé's souped-up Dodge Charger with the license plate DRV ANGRY. As he ricochets between inspired, offbeat performances and head-scratching abominable action flicks, it helps to recall that Cage not only took his name from comic books, but also named his son Kal-El, which was Superman's birth name on Krypton. In any case, filmmaker Patrick Lussier's Drive Angry is a trashy throwback to absurd B-features, only with more graphic violence and fetishistic female nudity. Optional. (S. Granger)