Review: DRIVE
Drive is the year’s slickest, coolest slice of ultra violent, minimalist fun. The 80s inspired electronic beats courtesy of Kavinsky & Lovefoxxx and The Chromatics drip from the celluloid, making the blood in your ears pulse and pump as the camera soars over the neon metropolis of downtown LA. Thank you, Nicholas Winding Refn, you have made a film that could revive even the most despondent film fan’s love of the movies. The end of the summer effectively means waving goodbye to the huge Hollywood blockbusters churned out over the last couple of months. Everybody flees the multiplexes and seeks shelter in the slightly shabby independent theatres as autumn brings with it the prestige picks vying for those prime Oscar slots, gently whisked by on crispy brown leaves. Drive mixes the best elements of these two sub sectors of the movies: the giddy thrills of watching car chases and shoot outs but in a thrilling and genuinely fresh way and the art house flourishes like experimental camerawork and expressionistic colour schemes. Drive is a fashionable film and so very, very cool. The A/W catwalk collections next year will be full of silver bomber jackets, 80s shades and scorpion prints.
A large part of the success of Drive is down to its director, the Danish auteur Nicholas Winding Refn. After making headways on the international festival circuit for years, mostly because of his incredibly violent Copenhagen drugs trilogy Pusher starring Denmark’s answer to Leonardo Di Caprio Mads Mikkelson, Refn has finally been welcomed into the golden bosom of Hollywood. He is pretty much the hot director of the moment. And for good reason. He brings a definite Scandinavian sensibility to Drive: understated and intelligent direction and an unfussy, low key aesthetic.
The film’s plot is fairly simple though its execution isn’t. A gifted mechanic and stunt driver, known simply as ‘driver’ (Ryan Gosling) does work on the side as a getaway driver on bank heists, giving his passengers a five minute ride to wherever they want. He starts seeing single mother Irene (Carey Mulligan) and does a job for her husband Standard (Oscar Issac) who is greeted with mob debt after his release from prison. Suffice to say things go horribly wrong.
In Drive, acts of unquestionable violence sit side by side comfortably with touching and sweet moments. For example the film progresses naturally from a scene where driver has taken Irene and her child to a secret spot by an LA creek, where they play skipping stones and climb trees to Ryan Gosling kicking a henchmen’s face until it is as flat as a pancake. It works because Refn gets the tone of the film just right. But my lord it is violent. I can safely say that Drive is the only film where you will see the dad from Finding Nemo (Albert Brooks) slit a two foot gash in the arm of the dad from Malcolm in the Middle (Bryan Cranston). Brains are splattered against windows and forks are jabbed into eye sockets without remorse.
Ryan Gosling comes of age in Drive. No longer a respected indie actor on the fringes of Hollywood he is a fully fledged star in the best possible way. Here he is a Zen monk in the body of a hit man. So calm and collected to the point of chilling you to your core. Carey Mulligan who at first seems slightly out of place with her delicate features and slight frame shows her talents as an actor pretty quickly. The supporting cast including Brooks, Cranston along with Ron Perlman and Mad Men redhead Christina Hendricks do equally great work.
Featuring a dazzling soundtrack, some startling cinematography and one of the greatest title sequences that I’ve ever seen Drive is nothing short of a cinematic treat, all wrapped up in a beautiful package.
