Last night I watched two movies: Gattica and Drive Angry.
Gattica was a
movie of ideas and message, a near future science fiction story with a very Brave New World feel. The main character, Ethan Hawke, is born the
old fashioned way in a world that is becoming increasingly focused on genetic
engineering and eugenics. As a “non-valid,” the Hawke character is deemed fit
for only manual or menial labor, but he dreams of more and ‘buys’ the identity
of a “Valid.”
Drive Angry was
almost a live action cartoon. The main character, Nicholas Cage, escapes from
hell to save his granddaughter from being used in a Satanic ritual to bring
hell to earth. There are fast cars,
gratuitous nudity, and various numbers of explosions and gory deaths. Cage teams up with a young woman who is
driving a 440 Magnum Charger, and is pursued by “the Accountant,” who is the
death character and who wants to return Cage to hell.
I liked both movies. On
the down side, Gattica was quite slow
moving and made the future look very staid, boring, and respectable. Maybe that will be true; I don’t know. Drive
Angry had some pretty ridiculous looking special effects during the
climactic battle scene. Generally,
though, both movies met the goal of keeping me interested.
Overall, I have to say I enjoyed Drive Angry a little more.
And one reason was the young female co-star. Besides exhibiting the required level of
attractiveness, she got the best lines in the movie and could conduct herself
believably in a fight. In fact, she
voiced what has now become my current favorite tough “guy” line in the movies. When the villain told her in his southern
drawl that: “I’m going to kill you, and then desecrate your corpse.” She responded with, “Well, between now and
then, I’m gonna fuck you up.”
Now there’s a line I wish I’d written.
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