Movie Review: DRIVE

Hey Tyrants!

Let’s face it.  After this summer movie season, I can’t be the only with a little CGI-fatigue when it comes to green screen-tastic action movies, right? One after the other after the other are being churned out like a conveyor belt. And after a while, what wowed me about CGI now feels….artificial and lazy. It’s hard to connect with a character when the only thing real in a scene is his floating head amid an entirely CGI-environment.

So you won’t imagine how psyched I was to watch Drive today, the latest movie from Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, starring Ryan Gosling.

The plot:
Pretty simple, Gosling plays an unnamed Driver who works by day as a Hollywood driving stuntman and moonlights as a getaway driver for the LA underworld. When he’s not doing either, Driver works as a mechanic at an auto repair shop for Shannon (Bryan Cranston). Other than Shannon, Driver has no real friends or connections.

A few things change that. Shannon sees great potential for Driver in the professional race car circuit. But Shannon’s the type of guy who just has no luck with money or…anything for that matter. So he goes to friend and local crime boss Bernie Rose played by Albert Brooks (Yes. THAT Albert Brooks). After seeing Driver… well…drive, Bernie immediately wants to back him and Shannon in this new partnership.

The other plot involves Driver’s neighbor Irene, a single mom played by the always fantastic Carey Mulligan.  Driver really takes to her and her young son Benicio and becomes and an almost stand-in for her imprisoned husband Standard (yep, that’s really his name). But when Standard gets out of jail, Driver backs off, only to be pulled back in when Standard needs help paying off protection money from when he was in jail. But when a simple heist goes bad, Driver has to do everything in his power to protect Irene and Benicio as well as stay alive.

My thoughts:
I’ll try keeping this as spoiler-free as possible. In watching Drive, it goes back to what I was saying about too much CGI. This movie has next to none as far as I know. It’s look and feel are a nice throwback to those late 60s, 70s movies like Bullit among others.

Ryan Gosling doesn’t say much in this movie, but he doesn’t have to. His facial expressions do that for him. It takes an immensely talented actor to do that.  His character is calm, collected, rarely losing his cool in any giving situation. But when he’s attacked, he explodes with a scary, detatched brutality.  In fact there was only one time in the whole movie he got visibly and audibly angered with someone.

There was a great scene where one of his former getaway clients tried to chat him up. Without losing his cool, Driver threatened to do harm to his teeth and not in those  words. This was before Driver ever threw a punch and I believed him!

Another great thing about Gosling’s Driver is how he’s always observing, taking everything around him in. For instance, when he first interacted with Irene, it was a simple asking which floor she lived on while they shared an elevator ride. After they both got off, with just a glance he noted both his interest in her and how she lived a few doors down from him. Or when driving back to his apartment complex how a few guys that had just left from beating up Standard clearly did not belong in the building. So without sounding long-winded, Ryan Gosling again proves why he is in such demand as an actor currently. The dude’s talented!

As for the rest of the cast, there were no weak links. Everybody played their roles perfectly. Bryan Cranston, who’s in every frakking movie nowadays, really worked as the ‘down-on-his-luck’ Shannon who just could not make good choices. Carey Mulligan really evoked the sweet innocence of a struggling young woman torn between loyalty to her husband and the allure of a brooding knight in shining armor. I totally understand why Driver was so drawn to her. Anytime Driver looked at her, you could see this unchecked joy fill his face that was so absent most of the movie.

Ron Perlman as Albert Brooks’s partner in crime played with his usual gruffness, but with a mouth that needed a censor. In short…he was awesome. Albert Brooks was very, very believable as a crime boss who would kill anyone who gets in his way, but at the same time really regretted having to end another person’s life.

The movie soundtrack was a flashback times 10, every song a synth pop-infused reminder of the 80s. But I loved that. It only added to Drive’s throwback look and feel.

And I cannot forget the director Nicolas Winding Refn. I’m unfamiliar with his earlier works (which includes the Pusher trilogy and the much-lauded Bronson), but I’m definitely a fan now. He shot a gorgeous film here. The way he captured the most nuanced looks, how he upped the tension even in the very first getaway chase where we see how good Driver is at what he does. Another thing that someone else noted was that while Los Angeles was the backdrop, Refn made use of many parts of the city that rarely get filmed. It gave the movie a differently feel from most LA-based films.

Most of the driving scenes are shot inside of Driver’s ride of the moment, so that we can only see either Gosling’s reactions, or a view through the rearview or windshield. This shooting choice actually gave the chase scenes a dynamic where me as a movie watcher got a passenger seat to a lot of the driving action.

One more thing I have to mention is how Refn captures violence really, REALLY fantastically. Was Drive non-stop violence? No. But the moments where violence ensues were shockingly gory and happen so quickly you at times don't see them coming.

So in closing, see Drive. Now. It’s amazing. Thank me later.

CCE