Pauses speak volumes over words . . .
. . . Nicholas Winding Refn knows this in spades...and after his Pusher trilogy he created the arguably modern cult-classic "Bronson"; which arguably put Tom Hardy's name sky-rocketting to the top of the Hollywood's actors to watch list, he did a film called "Valhalla Rising" . . . and experimenting with stylish ways of shooting scenes and editing the right music in and moving it around in unique ways to create a feel more like an opera than a film he directed what I feel is a modern masterpiece.
"Drive" is NOTHING like a "Fast and the Furious" film...and I loved it for that.
It's a character study about a character that barely talks. Ryan Gosling considered a heart throb for his roles in films like 'The Notebook' and 'Crazy Stupid Love' is still left with his dreamy perfect hair and sex appeal for the ladies but a character uniquely fleshed out and nihilistic enough to make good company sitting quiet in bars with Travis Bickle (Taxi Driver) and Alex De Large (A Clockwork Orange) looking confused about the world around him and doing what he does best . . . though unlike Alex and Travis, "Driver" (Ryan's nameless character) is more compassionate whose violence and disturbed nature bubbles under the surface and never truly ever comes out in the light. And for this film I think it works.
He is a professional film stunt driver (whose face is way too unmarred to actually look authentically like a real hollywood stunt driver) who moonlights as a driver for robberies. And there in is a seed of the story.
The opening of the movie has a particularly effective scene where Ryan calculatingly drives two robbers away from a warehouse robbery in the middle of downtown Los Angeles. He's not driving a muscle car but rather a realistic unsexy and inconspicuous type car and very calculatingly hides in parking lots, speeds in and out of traffic at the most key and opportune moments all while listening to a police radio scanner to pick and choose his moments like one of the most intricately filmed and edited sequences of cat and mouse I've ever seen in film.
Drive has a B-Movie plot. Moonlighting robbery driver falls for a girl whose boyfriend gets out of jail, is still mixed in with a mob, and he takes over the family as friend an alpha male - and a subplot is that a mafioso, played masterfully by Albert Brooks (who deserves and Oscar nomination for this one) playing opposite of heavy Ron Perlman (who he's far more intimidating than, which is a feat if you've ever seen Ron Perlman you'd understand), sponsors a friend's (Bryan Cranston) Driver to drive a race car for him to make legitimate money.
There aren't any sex scenes in 'Drive' (Sorry Carey Mulligan fans). But I'd be wrong if I didn't consider it a sexy movie. The lighting, poses of the actors, and music is carefully planned to make the most out of the tiniest of moments.
And as the Driver becomes deeper friends with Carey Mulligan's husband who just got out of jail the plot gets thicker and thicker where he helps him on 'one last job' that explodes into a downward spiral of violence and revenge in a fight he doesn't have to get involved in but just does on the principal for love over a women he can't be with.
This film had me near to tears because despite that I've not murdered people for a woman, once in my past I had been through some chaos...and this film brought out those memories. I have taken a girl out driving for hours with no goal in mind accept to get lost...and this film reminds me of me. And great films can tap into you on a very personal level and this one did. I don't love it because it's 'cool' it love it because it's passionate.
But in the same way I'm in love with it...it's the same way I have much trouble recommending it. The music, lighting, gaudy slow motion shots make it overly stylish and to film lovers not sensitive to its sensabilities of what it's trying to convey it can seem horribly self indulgent. But to me it's no different in style than a Park Chan Wok ("Oldboy") film or Quentin Tarantino film.
"Drive" has a sense about the type of film it is, and not the type of film the audience wants it to be...and I respect that, more than anything. I'm told reminiscent of hardcore 80's cop dramas but I've not seen enough of those to make that comparison.
If you don't mind silent moments, scenes that have poetry and seemingly no substance, techno music, and nihilistic violence and a character at the end of the film you can't truly know. Who never really had a true arch...and don't like a character that feels like an archetype of a type of repressed masculinity bubbling to the surface (as I see it anyways). . . than Nicholas Winding Refn's "Drive" is not your film.
But if that doesn't bother you...go see it . . . immediately
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