Honest question time: What was the last John Cusack movie that you generally enjoyed or were excited to see? I guess maybe the former was Hot Tub Time Machine and the latter was War, Inc., although I never ended up enjoying that second one. But a quick rundown of his IMDB left me wondering what the hell ever happened to that 1997-2000 era* Cusack who bookended a strong run of quality films with the wonderful Grosse Pointe Blank and the great High Fidelity, before churning out cookie cutter mung like America’s Sweethearts and 2012. Where are all the good movies dead, in the heart or in the head?
Cusack’s IMDB also reveals a James Franco-esque load of movies in post-production, and today we have the trailer for Drive Hard, which sounds and looks like a straight-to-DVD Nic Cage afterthought, but there’s just something so awesome about seeing Cusack firing off round after round in a baseball cap and sunglasses again. I’m not sure that we’d ever need a Grosse Point Blank sequel (and it’s been 17 years, so let’s not get any crazy ideas) but if Drive Hard is even half as good, I think we can declare it a winner.
*Grosse Pointe Blank is by far my favorite of the non-80s Cusack films, but Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and Pushing Tin are sorely underrated movies. And if not underrated, then they’re at least not in the TNT late night movies that you watch when you’re bored rotation like they deserve to be. In fact, I just realized that I haven’t owned a copy of Midnight since I purged my VHS collection years and years ago, so I have to go take care of that now. Also, how was Alison Eastwood never a star? Midnight should have been a breakout role – not to mention her acting DNA – but her IMDB profile reads like a glorified extra. Blows my mind.