Drive

Directed by: Nicolas Winding Refn

Written by: Hossein Amini (screenplay); James Sallis (book)










This film came highly recommended from several friends and critics, and when one friend told me it was on Netflix Instant, I immediately made the time to see it.  I was not disappointed.

The main character, forever unnamed (Gosling), is a getaway car driver who spends his days working as a mechanic.  Unfortunately, his boss (Cranston) has some ties to the mob (Brooks, Perlman) that he can't quite get away from.  Meanwhile, the driver has begun courting his neighbor (Mulligan) while her husband is in jail.  When the husband gets out, the driver agrees to help him on a heist.  The robbery is a bust and the husband is killed, and the driver is left to tie all the pieces together before it's too late.

Rarely do action-flicks have any sense of art.  Simultaneously, art house movies rarely have a good grasp of action.  "Drive" is that rare film that has an excellent balance of cinematic art and hard action.

The actors really make the characters come to life in "Drive."  Gosling breaks from his usual "handsome guy" mold for this character.  (OK, he's still handsome, but he's also incredibly violent.)  Albert Brooks, so often the funny guy recently, reveals perhaps his darkest character.  Bryan Cranston is absolutely believable as the man who is always a day late and down on his luck.  Even the hammy Ron Perlman and over-played Carey Mulligan manage to shed their stereotypical roles for a while.

This movie doesn't have a lot of dialogue.  Mainly because it doesn't have to.  In this, it's masterful at telling an entire story in only a few words.  It trusts that the audience can make inferences about things that are only referred to as tangents.

There is some shocking violence, but it's not gratuitous or unnecessary.  Rather, it's used as another medium of through which things are revealed about the characters.  (When you see it, think about which characters use which weapons and what that might say about them.  Come on, folks!  This isn't rocket science!)

If you haven't seen "Drive" yet, I'd definitely recommend it.