Patrick Lussier, who directed “The Prophecy 3,” “White Noise 2,” and “My Bloody Valentine,” sure hasn’t worked all that hard to secure a reputation for himself as a good filmmaker. But with his latest, he has managed a hat trick that has been eluding far superior artists for some time: damned but if he hasn’t figured out how to make Nicolas Cage make sense. The actor is well known for his taxing insistence on being the most outlandish, peculiar or just plain bug-nut crazy element of any movie that will have him (which very rarely does much more than make strong concepts weak, and weak concepts excruciating). Apparently, the trick is to surround the man with so much outlandish, peculiar, bug-nut craziness that he looks like the straight man.

Cage is cast as a dead man who steals the Devil’s own Chevelle to bust out of Hell on a mission of vengeance against a cult of rednecks who’ve murdered his daughter and plan to sacrifice her baby to achieve world dominion under Satan’s reign. One might think this bizarre plot would bring out the psycho in a guy like Cage. But, funny thing, it all just seems to sooth him. In the roaring tornado of guns, gristle and sexual gratuity that is “Drive Angry,” he stands calmly in the eye, loads his five-barreled shotgun (yes, you read that right), and lights a cigar.

rated PG-13

It’s a peculiar and possibly a little myopic phenomenon that Liam Neeson has only recently been popularly categorized as an American action hero. First off, he’s Irish, but that’s beside the point. Having trained as a professional boxer before acting ever caught his eye, he’s been caving people’s heads in for a good long time. At 58 years old, the man’s been steadily making movies for 30 years, and despite occasionally taking on some serious leading roles in award baiters like “Schindler’s List,” “Michael Collins” and “Kinsey,” let’s not forget he’s also got “Excalibur,” “Krull,” “Darkman” and “Phantom Menace” on his résumé. He is demonstrably capable of exuding either a pensive, sober intellectualism or, when tasked, bone-crushing animal brutality.

Last year’s “Taken” may have been the first to squarely match the two, and his newest vehicle “Unknown” strains to duplicate the model. Neeson is cast believably enough as a botanical engineer attending a European biotechnology summit who's life goes all kinds of pear-shaped when a random taxi crash cracks him on the noggin and leaves him alone, bruised and confused with no identification and half a memory to work with on the snowy streets of Berlin. Finding first that another man has assumed his name and position at the conference (as well as his lovely wife, who refuses to recognize the good doctor in any way) and soon thereafter that he’s being hunted down by a pair of mysterious hooligans in a white van, he sets out to discover who he is and just what the hell is going on.