Drive

"Now you just got a little boy's father killed. You almost got us killed. And now you're lying to me. So how 'bout this... from now on, every word outta your mouth's the truth, of I'm gonna hurt you. D'you understand?"

I always find it hard to describe how a film makes me feel, but I'll give it a go anyway. Drive gave me goosebumps, it made me feel tense and alive and emotional. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up with every musical cue, every shot, every meaningful look. It's now currently my top contender for best film of 2011, and in my eyes it has consolidated Ryan Gosling's position as the greatest actor of his generation. In short: it made me feel in ways that few films have done for me in recent years.

Drive is an incredibly stylish, neo-noirish, cool as ice crime film. Part of what makes it so devastatingly good is the way it uses music and film editing to create movement. The music is pounding and crystalline, dripping with '80s electro-pop soul and ominous synth-builds, driving the film along with an invested, heart-fluttering momentum. This effect is achieved primarily through the use of this non-diagetic music as a linking device... it carries on over several scenes, making whole sequences of scenes feel like grinding, unstoppable montages. It's an enigmatic effect that has become director Nicolas Winding Refn's signature, and should see him eventually attain an iconic status similar to Martin Scorsese or David Lynch.

The plot of Drive is rather basic, truth to be told. An unnamed man (Ryan Gosling) makes his living through driving - both as a stunt driver in action films and as a getaway driver for heists. All he does is drive. He does this one thing and he does it well, and this is why (in terms of the narrative) he remains unnamed. He is The Driver. Anyway, he begins to make some moves on Irene (Carey Mulligan), his pretty young neighbour. Her husband Standard (Oscar Isaac) is in prison, and when Standard gets out he finds himself pressured into a heist by some very bad men to whom he owes money. In order to protect Irene and her son, The Driver is forced to help Standard in a heist. Of course, the heist goes bad, and The Driver finds himself holding a lot of money that belongs to the wrong people.

It's a film very much underplayed. Plot developments are suggested through action and body language rather than dialogue, but it never feels too subtle or boring. Refn's effective direction ensures that the ball keeps moving. Every shot is perfectly edited into the next, with the film blocked and framed meticulously as a stark, minimalist thriller remniscent of a simpler era of filmmaking. It's also layered with a darkness suggested through performance, lighting and atmosphere, as well as Refn's ongoing examinations of alpha-male violence. This is another thing I should mention... in the second half of the film things get a bit violent. I'm not talking about your typical action violence, this violence is unexpectedly shocking and channels primarily as an eruption that contrasts with Ryan Gosling's incredible and restrained performance.


Gosling is amazing... he's young De Niro, he's McQueen, he's John Wayne, he's Gary Cooper. He's mastered the undersold art of the minimalistic man of action. There aren't many actors of his generation who have realised so completely that less is more. He's so perfectly controlled, doing so little whilst remaining expressive enough to rule the film. The Driver is a guy who doesn't blink, both literally and metaphorically. Gosling doesn't try to act tough, he doesn't force aggression into his voice because he doesn't need to - he just is tough. This is a man with no self-doubt.

The other standout castmember is Albert Brooks, an American comedian-auteur who reach his height in the '80s as a kind of lite-version of Woody Allen. Never would I have imagined Brooks as a tough guy, but that's what he does here. Brooks has toughened up in his old age. I guess this surprise characterisation can probably be traced to his recent-ish supporting role in the TV show Weeds. Anyway, he plays Bernie Ross, the head heavy that Gosling squares off against. It's a really intimidating performance, helped in spades by Refn's inspired use of spatial inequality. For example, the scene where Bernie and The Driver meet has them standing at radically different heights. This is reinforced later in a scene set at a mechanic's garage where Bernie threatens The Driver in a veiled manner, and the camera has to tilt donwards afterwards in order to show Bernie walking away. In nearly every shot he appears in, Bernie is framed as a force to be reckoned with.

It's almost a perfect film. I think I'll have to rewatch it a few more times before I settle on that... I think I was so dazzled by the shape and form of Drive that I didn't really pay enough attention to the finer points. If it's a case of style over substance all I can say is: what style! This film is ultra-slick and brutal, a hardline modern film noir shot through an emotive and iconically bare European eye. Refn has brought together an array of styles and film references to create an action-myth zeitgeist, and here's hoping that it gets the attention it deserves.

DIRECTOR: Nicolas Winding Refn
WRITER/SOURCE: Hossein Amini
KEY ACTORS: Ryan Gosling, Albert Brooks, Carey Mulligan, Oscar Isaac, Ron Perlman, Bryan Cranston, Christina Hendricks, James Biberi, Russ Tamblyn

RELATED TEXTS
- Refn's previous English-langueg films are Bronson, Valhalla Rising and Fear X. His Danish films are Pusher, Pusher II, Pusher 3 and Bleeder.
- Refn has gone on record to say that his two major influences for this film were Bullitt and The Day of the Locust. Other influences include Point Blank, To Live and Die in L.A., Two Lane Blacktop, Driver and Risky Business.