Drive
There are a myriad of ways to describe this film, so I've chosen a fairly blunt way to open this review -
Driveis a monster of a film, and it's a beast that is nearly impossible to classify, a creature that rears its head and defies any person to give it a single name. Is it a Walter Hill throw-back flick, a slow burning endeavor in deconstructing the everyday action film? Is it a ponderous, brooding art-house saga that investigates the complicated relationship between two pretty damn lonely souls? Or is it a living breathing love ballad of the John Hughes variety, with all of the bright neon sensibilities of the sappy '80s with 100% more head stomping?
The answer is that it's all this and more. To be honest, this is one of the first films in a long time that left me reeling at what I had seen, not because of its complexity, but its sheer power. And there is a ton of torque under the hood here. The plot, as mentioned, is not complex - a nameless stunt driver that moonlights as a getaway driver finds himself entangled with some very bad men while attempting to help a family (and specifically, a woman) who he has come to love and care about. It's handled with care, with flare, and most of all, with a deadly seriousness, even if some of the encounters come off almost absurd in their presentation.
The real power comes from the performances, and while I mean that as a compliment to the actors here, I really mean director Nicolas Winding Refn (
Bronson, The Pusher Trilogy). While Gosling does great work in this as the lead, this is Refn's show, and he makes some fascinating, sometimes bizarre choices. Refn is a talented director who's strength is his sense of style, but this is the first of his films where I really felt connected to what I was seeing on the screen. Much of the character interactions (at least between the two leads) are long stretches of minimalist dialog that borders on silence, where Gosling and Mulligan are communicating by sheer force of their respective gazes to one another. While it initially comes off as a bit awkward, and it really does end up working because both actors are completely dedicated and ready to sell it. What could have been a trainwreck in lesser hands turns into a very unique and tense experience in terms of characterization.
There is some fantastic talent in front of the camera. Gosling is strong here, playing a character that is given less to do with his mouth and more to do with his eyes. The character is so rooted in a deeply silent manner, that I wondered if he was supposed to be autistic - yes, it's that extreme. There are some intriguing themes within this Driver, the strongest undertone being the need to reach out from a lonely, meaningless existence and be the hero for someone else. This is a very hard part to play, and Gosling is as engaging as anyone could ever be.
Bryan Cranston is effective as a sad-sack garage owner and "manager" to Gosling's character (both in a illicit and legal capacity), and Carey Mulligan expertly crafts pathos, understanding, and most of all chemistry with Gosling as his love interest. But it's the underrated Albert Brooks, an actor whose realm is almost completely comedy, that is the absolute best piece here. His presence is quite simply a revelation of good-natured humor giving way to a subtly menacing core, eventually morphing into a truly frightening visage of violent terror. The sheer gravity of him simply wont allow me to view him the same again as an actor, and that my friends is the power of a special performance.
This is hard film to giving a numeric rating to, because it's simply not going to work for a large amount of people. It expects you to be patient, to simply observe these odd social transactions between characters - it never feels completely alien in the way people interact, but it does feel at the very least extremely minimal in everything it does. It is not an action film, despite some simply stunning driving sequences and one of the best cold opens I've seen in a genre film. There are certain sequences here that ooze style and beauty, and will probably go down as extremely representative portions of this picture. I hate to use the cliche "slow-burning", but it aptly describes
Drive. If you can't understand the themes or can't buy into the relationships presented, then a lot of the film's final Act will be lost. To those who do embrace it all, then prepare to be rewarded with one of the most tense, alluring, and shocking films to come out in a long while.
5/5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrDRdna-Rxg