In our weekly seriesAnatomy of a Scene's Anatomy, we're going to be taking a look at (in)famous sexscenes and nude scenes throughout cinema history and examining their construction, their relationship to the film around it, and their legacy. This week, Nic Cage's otherwise fun and cheeky flick Drive Angry gets dinged for straight-up stealing a scene from an equally bonkers flick from four years earlier titled Shoot 'Em Up.
Shoot 'Em Up came and went in the late summer of 2007, almost completely unnoticed. That's a real shame because it's an absolutely insane movie in the same vein as much more successful movies like Crank, Face/Off, and John Wick, where logic takes a backseat to really kickass action setups. The film came to home video in early 2008 just as Blu-ray was proving the dominant high-def format, and though it made for a worthy demo disc, it just never caught on as more than a cult classic.
Fast-forward to 2011 and another flop is on the horizon.Drive Angry is the movie we all wanted Ghost Rider to be. In fact, if you watch it through the prism of being an "unlicensed" Ghost Rider movie, it more or less functions as one. Unfortunately,the studio sank all of its advertising dollars into the fact that Drive Angrywas shot in 3D,right around the time that was beginning to wane a bit as a selling point. The movie tanked, in equally unfair fashion as Shoot 'Em Up, when all they really needed to sell the movie on was its premise in which Nicolas Cage breaks out of Hell to stop a cult leader from bringing about the apocalypse bymurdering Cage's baby granddaughter.
All manner of absolutely insane stuff happens in Drive Angry, but one scene in particular tends to grab people's attention. 27 minutes in, Cage and his traveling companion Amber Heard stop for the night at a roadhouse bar and motel called Bull by the Balls—the film is nothing if not subtle. Cage gets busy with waitress Charlotte Ross—from NYPD Blue—who questions why his clothes are still on when all of hers are off. He responds, "I never disrobe before a gunfight," and then all hell breaks loose...
As you can see, Cage fights off all manner of murderous hillbillies armed with various farming implements, and does it all while still penetrating Ross. It's as memorable a moment can get in a movie jam-packed with memorable moments. The only problem is, Shoot 'Em Up did it first...
Granted, the scenes aren't identical, but the intention certainly is: Our hero is such a badass, he doesn't need to stop having sex to fight off hordes of armed people trying to kill him. Cage's character has broken out of Hell, so he's technically more of a supernatural being than anything else at this point. He gets shot in the eye at point blank rage at one point and it heals three scenes later. I guess I more readily buy his ability to pull off this superhuman feat, but you've got to give the edge to Clive Owen here for having the stones to go naked. Cage probably insisted on that expository line about not disrobing before a gunfight.
Drive Angry has enough other insane nonsense in it for me to forgive this transgression. Hell, the film has a weapon called a "Godkiller" that can destroy the soul of any person it shoots, erasing them from existence. It cannot be written off wholesale, but it's disappointing that they ripped off this scene and thought that just making it crazier would be justification enough. Shoot 'Em Up gets no love as it is, and there's no doubt in my mind that the people who cooked up the script for Drive Angry definitely saw Shoot 'Em Up.
Stealing from another film is nothing new, filmmakers crib from other filmmakers to great success and acclaim all the time. Look at this year's Oscar race to see at least two movies—Joker and Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood—that borrow heavily from the past to achieve their own brand of success. I guess it's just disappointing when nobody seems to notice or care. Neither film's Wikipedia or IMDb Trivia page mentions the other film, and no outrage about this really exists outside of a few reddit threads here and there.
Probably because neither Shoot 'Em Up nor Drive Angry was a box office success does anyone care that the latter flat out ripped off the former. Had one film been met with wild success, perhaps a lawsuit might have been drawn up, but both films are now consigned to the $5 Wal-Mart bin of history. They're also both worth at least that much to add to your collection, particularly if you like any of those aforementioned films likeCrank,Face/Off, andJohn Wick. BothShoot 'Em UpandDrive Angryare worthy additions to the action subgenre in which those flicks are contained.
Check out our other "Compare and Contrast" editions of Anatomy of a Scene's Anatomy
—The 2 Very Different Sex ScenesofBasic Instinct
—How Halle Berry's Nude Debut Led Her toMonster's Ball
—How the Remake of Oldboy Stacks Up Against the Original
—In a Wild Moment Gets Lost in Translation asBlame it on Rio
—Reese Witherspoon Goes Wild to Break a Sixteen Year Nudity Drought
—Analyzing the Dream Logic of Eyes Wide Shut
—Madonna Touches On Her Basic Instincts in Body of Evidence
—Youth is Wasted on Two Notoriously Horny Old Actors
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