Review of Drive
When I went to see Drive last Saturday, I was joined in my theater row by a group of six teenage boys. The opening scene of the movie has Ryan Gosling as the wheelman of a getaway car. Every time Gosling hit the gas I could see the boys leaning forward in anticipation of crash laden car chase in which he leaves the LAPD in a pile of twisted metal in Gosling’s rear view mirror. But, as we soon see the movie is too sophisticated for that kind of CGI nonsense. Instead Gosling makes clever use of the urban terrain and the end of Lakers basketball game to complete his job successfully.
Gosling plays a modern day man with no name. He is quiet. He loves to drive. Every turn of the story turns out not to be what you expect. The director, Nicolas Winding Refn, delivers a realistic tale of an atypical hero. Gosling is heroic because he is uncompromising in his belief of what is right and wrong. And he is faithful to those beliefs rather than spouting them as dialog only to abandon them for the convenience of the plot. Knowing that the Driver won’t compromise adds a compelling tension to the film.
Carey Mulligan plays Irene who is the next door neighbor to the Driver. Her portrayal of an attractive single mother (her husband, the father to her child is in prison) is played with perfect grace an vulnerability. The Driver befriends Irene and her son. The boy is the one that gets the Driver to smile. It’s subtle yet powerful connection.
When the husband, Standard, played by Oscar Isaac, is released from prison and comes home, director Winding Refn brilliantly avoids an absurd jealous show down between Standard and the Driver. Oscar Isaac’s character contrite for the crime that got him into prison, accepts that it was his own fault he wasn’t around and chooses not to go down the road of what may or may not have happened between his wife an the Driver. Instead he thanks Gosling for helping out his family. Later Standard’s criminal past comes back around to haunt him and he reaches out to the driver for help which sets us up for the rest of the movie.
Drive is an epic film. The performances are extraordinary as is the story and the director’s treatment of it. When the final credits rolled I could here a small debate from the teenage boys next to me. One said there weren’t enough chase scenes. To which is friends chimed in that it would have ruined the movie. They were impressed that the Driver was clever rather than just another special effects surfer.
Get your fanny off the couch and see Drive on the big screen.
