Drive (2011)

Or just park

Director Nicolas Winding Refn

Stars Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Ron Perlman & Albert Brooks

Things You Might Like

• Alternate action movie
• Cult driving film in the making
• Character driven tension
• Pounding soundtrack
• Pounding heads

Things You Might Not Like

• Slow build before the action
• Brutal violence onscreen
• Nightmarish beach scene

Conclusion
From the main titles, through the score and down to the driver with no name, Drive is an action artwork draped in 80’s atmosphere and breaking the speed limit

4 out of 5 New Wheels

Luke McGrath

***

Watching a film like Drive, awarded best director at Cannes 2011, is a pleasure for anyone interested in the history of movies.  Playing off cult road classics like Two Lane Blacktop and Bullitt, it manages to mix in a dose of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly for good measure.  That’s not to say that Drive doesn’t stand on its own four wheels, just that it’s a film shot for film fans.  It won’t alienate a newcomer to the genre, but might put off anyone popping in just to watch Ryan Gosling be a hero.

Following the story marked out in the 2005 book of the same name, Drive is the tale of an unnamed driver; Hollywood stuntman by day and getaway driver by night.  So far, so predictable.  His routine is disturbed when he gets involved in the fate of a young mother and her son that leads him deep into the shady world of organised crime.  Still pretty straightforward, but that’s very much part of the delight with this film; it takes a standard car movie model and plays it straight.  The beauty is in the direction and performances.

Most obvious of these is the central role of The Driver, played with brooding solemnity by Ryan Gosling.  With no back story and little dialogue, comparisons will often be made to Clint Eastwood’s man with no name.  Yet there is more to the character than first meets the eye, little sparks of emotion that bleed from The Driver as things start to go wrong.  He is also part Alex DeLarge when sudden, sharp beats of ultra-violence become necessary to protect people he cares for.  Rising from these, blood splattered over his eyes, he is just as much an angel to his protectorate as he is the devil to people in his way.

To have such a solemn character snap takes a huge weight, delivered by a robbery gone wrong.  It is in the aftermath that the brutal violence begins, at odds with the gently paced and romantically filmed first act.  A head is blown up, Scanners style, from a close range shot gun blast and things only get more gruesome from there on out.  As much as these events are necessary to force The Driver’s hand and push him to the edge of sanity, most seem gratuitously detailed.  That said, the moment The Driver turns to the girl he is protecting after kicking a guy’s head to pieces is one you will never forget.

Drive is a film peppered with a few such moments; a scene where Gosling is disguised in a rubber mask, silhouetted by the moon and looking down at a future victim could come from any number of horror movies but will remind most of Halloween’s Michael Myers.  Towards the end, two characters fight but, in respite for the director as much as the audience, their struggle is shown only by their shadows crossing on concrete.

Selling Drive as a cult road movie doesn’t by any means do this piece of work justice, but it is the closest the clumsy genres of film will get to defining what it means.  In fact, it is much more than that, it is a film lover’s film; an ode to the 1980’s, to brutal violence and what it means, to heroes without names and to the rising star power and talent of Ryan Gosling.

Buy Drive from Amazon