The gender politics of Drive Angry 3D
Mar. 11th, 2011 01:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficThis is, for the most part, exactly what it says on the tin. If the prospect of Nicolas Cage escaping from Hell to get revenge on a cult led by Bella Swan's dad, all while pursued by a demonic Agent Mahone, doesn't appeal to you, this probably won't change your mind. But if that does sound fun, you should know it's only the tip of the iceberg, and a big part of the movie's appeal is seeing just how crazy, gory, and generally B-movie things can get (the answer: very). And so while I don't want to give too much away, I really do want to praise William Fichtner, who plays "the Accountant." Fichtner has this weird ability for me to want the whole movie to be about him whenever he shows up. Admit it, as good as The Dark Knight was, wouldn't you watch a whole movie about an honor-bound, shotgun-toting Mob bank manager who's watching his beloved city getting taken over by freaks?
By the way, I didn't make that post title just to be clever. Amber Heard shows up (in short-shorts, natch... which ended up being offered as a prize on a movie site contest. That's just asking to be the first thirty minutes of Weird Science 2: The Amber Hearding) as Cage's partner-in-crime. Refreshingly, the screenplay makes her as crazy badass as the rest of the cast, even if she does need to be saved a few too many times. It's a fair thing, since she's about the only human in a cast of various hellspawn, but don't be disappointed when the movie shies away from being a buddy movie in favor of Cage being the Big Damn Hero.
As I was saying, thankfully the movie does more with her than being the helpless female who gets an infodump in the face, as most genre films have done with the token female since The Terminator -- this is probably most idiotic in the most idiotic Skinwalkers, in which a clan of nice-guy werewolves are protecting a much-prophesied kid who will cure them of lycanthropy (cool of the Native Americans to be able to foresee eugenics). Their entire salvation rests on safeguarding the kid's location from the evil werewolves (who end up finding him from a tiny detail in a home video), so naturally they don't inform the kid's mom, who is actually the only person in the entire town who hasn't been training to protect the kid. Yes, because what use would his mother be in keeping a kid protected? Good thing they didn't have Facebook back then. "Rhona Mitra, you've gotten a friend request from Evil Werewolves Who Want To Eat Your Son's Face. Accept?"
Sorry, that movie was just brutal. Buuut, Drive Angry does much better, avoiding the seemingly obligatory age-inappropriate romance between Cage and Heard, and treating her as a brawler just like the men. What made me do a double-take is a scene earlier on in which, of course, she catches her fiance cheating on her and, after an argument, attacks him. Not with little slaps, either, she's doing to his face what the prequels did to the Star Wars franchise. Then the cheater hits back and Cage does a little head-twist like "Chivalry-sense... tingling!" And though for a moment it seems like the movie is going to try to have it both ways with Amber Heard being an action chick who still can't do enough damage to justify being defended against, then the cheater hits her when she's down and Cage drops an air conditioning unit on his head. Fair enough.
By the way, I didn't make that post title just to be clever. Amber Heard shows up (in short-shorts, natch... which ended up being offered as a prize on a movie site contest. That's just asking to be the first thirty minutes of Weird Science 2: The Amber Hearding) as Cage's partner-in-crime. Refreshingly, the screenplay makes her as crazy badass as the rest of the cast, even if she does need to be saved a few too many times. It's a fair thing, since she's about the only human in a cast of various hellspawn, but don't be disappointed when the movie shies away from being a buddy movie in favor of Cage being the Big Damn Hero.
As I was saying, thankfully the movie does more with her than being the helpless female who gets an infodump in the face, as most genre films have done with the token female since The Terminator -- this is probably most idiotic in the most idiotic Skinwalkers, in which a clan of nice-guy werewolves are protecting a much-prophesied kid who will cure them of lycanthropy (cool of the Native Americans to be able to foresee eugenics). Their entire salvation rests on safeguarding the kid's location from the evil werewolves (who end up finding him from a tiny detail in a home video), so naturally they don't inform the kid's mom, who is actually the only person in the entire town who hasn't been training to protect the kid. Yes, because what use would his mother be in keeping a kid protected? Good thing they didn't have Facebook back then. "Rhona Mitra, you've gotten a friend request from Evil Werewolves Who Want To Eat Your Son's Face. Accept?"
Sorry, that movie was just brutal. Buuut, Drive Angry does much better, avoiding the seemingly obligatory age-inappropriate romance between Cage and Heard, and treating her as a brawler just like the men. What made me do a double-take is a scene earlier on in which, of course, she catches her fiance cheating on her and, after an argument, attacks him. Not with little slaps, either, she's doing to his face what the prequels did to the Star Wars franchise. Then the cheater hits back and Cage does a little head-twist like "Chivalry-sense... tingling!" And though for a moment it seems like the movie is going to try to have it both ways with Amber Heard being an action chick who still can't do enough damage to justify being defended against, then the cheater hits her when she's down and Cage drops an air conditioning unit on his head. Fair enough.
