DRIVE
DIRECTOR: Nicolas Winding Refn
CAST: Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Oscar Isaac, Ron Perlman, Bryan Cranston
CLASSIFICATION: 16 LNV
RUNNING TIME: 101 minutes
RATING: 4 stars (out of 5)
Theresa Smith
MOODY, measured and menace-laden, ‘Drive’ is director Nicolas Winding Refn’s first attempt at a film he didn’t write himself. Yet the 41-year-old auteur’s nihilistic touch is stamped all over this stylised, art house action film.
The Danish-born director spent his teenage years in New York and his love of the 1980s shines through in the music, the hot pink credits, even Ryan Gosling’s austere wardrobe.
To the uninitiated it will merely seem steeped in 1980s neon-drenched action flicks, but anyone who has ever seen the 1978 film The Driver is going to wonder why Refn is so adamant he was not inspired by that particular film.
Gosling plays an unnamed driver, a mechanic who also works as a Hollywood stuntman and moonlights as a getaway driver.
Introverted to the point where he is practically autistic in the way he responds to external forces, the protagonist befriends his neighbour, Irene (Mulligan), her young son and, eventually, her husband Standard (Isaac).
He listens to a police scanner when out on a night job and keeps his cool no matter the circumstances, and when things really become bad, he turns on the pop music.
The set pieces involving the cars required extreme choreography and there’s some subtly used cgi in evidence, but what really makes this movie work is the excellent characterisation.
At the centre of the film is an unfolding love story, with practically taciturn Driver falling for wary Irene and long awkward silences punctuated by him almost getting close to displaying some real human emotion.
But matters go pear-shaped when a job goes wrong and his true nature shines through. Turns out his quiet demeanour hides the nature of a scorpion: slow to anger but extreme in response.
The film is about people wanting to be what they really are not and about the nature of people – what their nature dictates their actions should be, versus what society expects of them.
Gosling plays it cool and extremely focused, and with just a grimace or the raising of an eyebrow he ratchets up the tension. When he explodes, the reaction is that much more brutal because you just don’t see it coming.
Flamboyant characters abound, like Ron Perlman as a Jewish gangster who thinks being an Italian mobster will earn him more respect, never acknowledging that the reason people don’t respect him is he’s a total ass. Albert Brooks pulls off quiet menace with dis-quieting ease and Bryan Cranston is a study in haplessness. Even Oscar Isaac manages to take his just-released-from-prison character beyond cliché.
Despite reportedly seeking advice from enfant terrible of New French Extremity Gaspar Noé (‘Enter the Void’) for a particularly gory violent scene, Refn relies on subtlety more often than not. Hence when bad things happen, they are that much more surreal, and, confounding viewer expectation, the body count is nowhere near that of, say, ‘Pulp Fiction’.
The film alternates bleak sequences of hypnotically soothing images with rushes of hyper-kinetic violence. The growing nightmare unfolds at a studied pace, and this calculated winding up of tension strips the thriller of the thrills.
The long, pensive takes and slow fades and zooms are very Stanley Kubrick.
Cinematography is lush, accentuating saturated colours, and the slow motion shots are saved for the everyday, not the action sequences. Even between action sequences you never catch your breath despite the slowly unfolding scenes, because the tension is almost unbearable.
While pulpy action flicks and stylised arthouse films are usually two different genres, in the case of this film the two idioms merge, creating an irony if ever there was one.
If you liked… ‘Pusher’ or ‘Run, Lola Run’… you will like this.