Drive

DRIVE
ICON
RELEASED 23 September 2011

A fantasy movie for geeks everywhere. Man of few words (Ryan Gosling) is a Hollywood wheelman by day, thinking nothing of rolling cars over and casually strolling back to his makeup trailer, while in the evening he is a driver for hire (only for a strict five minutes, mind) on armed heists. His flat contains no possessions, he doesn’t seem to have any family, and the only friend he has is Shannon (Bryan Cranston), the boss of the garage he works at. Striking up a friendship with the girl next door, Irene (Carey Mulligan) and her son Benicio (Kaden Leos), Driver (Gosling) soon becomes embroiled in a gangster’s battle over a bag of money. Unfortunately for the gangsters, they couldn’t have imagined how deadly Driver is with a hammer and a car.

Director Nicolas Winding Refn has been bubbling under for a few years (‘Bronson’, ‘Valhalla Rising’) and with ‘Drive’, he’s hit the big time. It’s incredibly stylish (which admittedly keeps the movie running far longer than it has any right to) with it’s glossy, 80’s style direction (Michael Mann, eat your heart out), drawn out exchanges between characters (why talk when……. we can…….. pause……………. and………….. talk some more later……………..without……………………. ………………. really saying much…………), too-cool-for-school soundtrack (check out ‘The Chromatics’ and the opening track by ‘Kavinsky & Lovefoxxx’) and head-splattering ultra-violence. Driver uses a hammer and his boot to take out the opposition, and his silent-schtick really makes this all the more threatening. People get stabbed or shot quite unexpectedly, and ‘Driver’ is definitely a movie that will have people of a weak disposition covering their face in horror.

If 2009 was the year of Carey Mulligan, then 2011 appears to be Ryan Gosling’s year. With ‘Drive’, as well as ‘Crazy, Stupid, Love’ and ‘The Ides of March’, the stars have aligned and decided we have a new actor to worship. To be honest, I think the role, rather than the actor, are what makes ‘Driver’, because there’s little acting required and simply a need to look cool at all times, which Gosling perfectly manages. I’m not sure everyone could make a shiny gold jacket and a toothpick look so good. The supporting cast of Cranston, Albert Brooks, Christina Hendricks, and Ron Perlman are equally memorable, with Brooks (best known for many voice roles from ‘The Simpsons’), showing himself to be an actor of some menace.

The ‘Drive’ script features plenty of quotable material such as the following. ‘If I drive for you, you give me a time and a place. I give you a five-minute window, anything happens in that five minutes and I’m yours no matter what. I don’t sit in while you’re running it down; I don’t carry a gun… I drive.’

My only critcism of the film is that could have been more driving! What there is slick, but it won’t worry the classics like ‘Bullit’ or ‘French Connection’. Still, that’s a minor whinge, as ‘Drive’ is one of the best films of 2011, no doubt about it. It starts in fifth gear, and doesn’t slow down for the corners.

FIVE OUT OF FIVE