Drive

The action flick meets the
art house in Nicolas Winding Refn’s ’80s inflected crime drama, a stylishly
propulsive film that owes its chilly luster to Michael Mann, its rumbling
tension to David Lynch, and its brooding existentialism to Jean-Pierre
Melville. Reveling in sleek visuals and explosive sounds, it combines cool
European technique with classic American narrative (guns, girls, cars) to
produce an intense and exciting movie that delivers jolts of adrenaline and
unsettling instances of violence.

Ryan Gosling stars as the
solitary “driver-with-no-name,” a Hollywood stunt driver who moonlights as a
wheelman for criminals. Along with his repair garage boss (Bryan Cranston), he
convinces a Jewish mobster (the terrifically sinister Albert Brooks) to invest
in their plans to enter the stock car racing circuit. Enter his attractive
neighbor, single-mom Irene (Carey Mulligan), whose quiet manner and charming
young son win his affection. Their polite and promising courtship begins only
to be derailed by the return of Irene’s husband Standard, who’s finished a
stint in prison for armed robbery. Essentially a good guy, Standard is in
crushing debt to a shadowy group of thugs who arranged for his protection while
in jail. With interest growing by the day, he needs to find a lot of money
fast, or else he and his family will suffer the consequences. Learning this,
the Driver decides to pull off one last job to help the guy out …and everything
goes to hell. Soon, he and Irene are in the crosshairs of a vicious double
cross, a brutal gangster (Ron Perlman), and his murderous cronies.

Steeped in noir and genre
conventions, Drive gets pretty predictable after a dynamite first hour,
as it downshifts its narrative to indulge in menacing atmosphere and glorious
widescreen images. Refn loads his movie with self-consciously retro touches while
ace cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel fills the frame with hallucinatory
visuals. From the sinuous and sensual to sudden hard-edged violence, Drive is as brilliantly calculated, as it is elegantly thrilling. The Danish
filmmaker is a master of tension, juxtaposing moods and emotions to deliver
visceral shocks. Whether it’s the film’s exquisitely executed opening — a
gripping game of car cat and mouse, or an elevator scene that moves from tender
romance to extreme violence within seconds, Refn deserved his Best Direction
award at this year’s Cannes. More importantly, the director is never gratuitous
in his approach to brutality. Instead he uses the film’s bloodshed as a way to
increase the stakes.

Gosling’s masculine,
minimalist approach is a good fit to this approach, and plays like a modern-day
version of Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name. He’s composed and self-contained,
a man of few words but decisively brutal to action. The uncomfortable silences
Gosling injects into his dialogue — always holding a beat or two longer than
expected — can be tortuous, made even more so by his dull, grinning affect. But
if you watch the actor’s eyes, that’s where the performance resides. Wary,
watchful, and wanting, he’s an anti-hero who is more than just style and stare.

In love with Los Angeles’ horizontal landscapes (much the way Michael Mann was in Heat or Collateral),
Drive is as alluring as the pulsing synth beats that fuel its score. The
movie delivers enough action, suspense, and revenge to satisfy the multiplex
masses while introducing them to the bleak, unsettling stillness and deconstructive
black humor of Refn’s overseas instincts. Vroom, indeed.

This article appears in Sep 14-20, 2011.