Drive

Directed by Nicholas Winding Refn

Neon pink titles, a strip of endless lights, mapping the roads ahead, electro beats careening over the images, as soon as Nicholas Winding Refn’s film Drive introduces itself (after a smart opening getaway chase sequence) we know we are in for a stylish, alternative ride.

Drive seemed to appear out of nowhere at this year’s Cannes film festival, it had no anticipated hype surrounding it and seemed to be a hard sell to seemingly unenthusiastic critics-indie darling Ryan Gosling drives around LA in a postmodern neo noir revenge movie. So far, so non-fussed. However after the screening, those critics were doing an ironic U-turn and took to the Internet to rave about the cinematic sucker punch they had just experienced.

Drive stars Ryan Gosling, a mysterious lone wolf, his origins are not explained and the fact that he is never named, only referred to as the kid by employer/mentor Shannon (Bryan Cranston), heightens the sense that this man is a vague soul, driving the streets in an emotional blankness. He works as a stunt driver for movies by day and provides getaway transportation for criminals at night, doing so with minimal fuss or feeling. But his equilibrium of detachment is broken when he begins a tentative friendship with his neighbour Irene (Carey Mulligan) and her son Benicio, he begins to feel, and perhaps, to imagine a future. But this is short lived when Irene’s husband Standard (Oscar Isaac) returns after a stint in prison and his homecoming proves to be a catalyst for a chain of events which starts with a bungled robbery and leads to double crossing, murder and revenge with the ‘Driver’ caught in the midst of destruction by his affection for Irene.
Adapted from the novel by James Sallis, Drive has all the makings of a pulpy B movie, and in some un-detrimental ways that is what it is, but the film also elevates past its potentially trashy origins to become a film of a whole lot of style yet also substance. This is merited by the combination of director Nicholas Winding Refn and star Gosling. The Danish director, whose previous film Bronson showed his deft touch for portraying visual violence, but also how to pull out a mesmerising performance from his lead, again here displays the flair for punctuating the narrative with flashes of intense bloodshed and balancing these with moments of tension but also tragic tenderness. From his leading man Gosling comes a performance that if they awarded Oscars for coolness, he would win hands down, as the ‘driver’ Gosling is strong, silent, brooding and completely charismatic. Not since Brad Pitt's eclectic threads in Fight Club has an actor managed to pull off such a dubious fashion choice, a gold silky bomber jacket emblazoned with a scorpion on the back, with some much style that it makes you wish you could wear such an item, despite the ridiculous reality of it. Recalling James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause or Steve McQueen in Bullitt, Gosling manages to convey more with a look than most dialogue can achieve, though behind the glacier vacant stare, there is also the flashes of longing, longing for a life with Irene, his puppy dog eyes soften, he is smitten, but we know it is a doomed affair. Winding Refn’s pacing of the narrative lets us know that it is doomed, a sense of foreboding discord hangs in the air, it navigates round the streets as the ‘Driver’ himself does. There will be no clean getaways which only makes the fleeting embrace between the ‘Driver’ and Irene, amidst all the ensuing violence, all the more heartbreaking.
Some critics have commented that Drive appears too cool for its own good, its sense of knowing is too calculated for their taste, but should we reject something that is inherently stylish just because it is unafraid to be what it needs and wants to be?
In one sardonic scene, mobster Bernie Rose (Albert Brooks) is explaining to the ‘Driver’ how he came to know Shannon from his time producing movies, he says ‘I used to make action movies, sexy stuff, the studios called them European’.
Perhaps we can take a leaf out of this European filmmaker’s book, to give cinema a jolt and make a movie with action that’s unashamedly retro but also damn sexy.

Review- Warrior

Directed by Gavin O'Connor

The sports/fractured family drama enjoyed a renaissance last year with David O Russell’s The Fighter, which went on to win Oscar awards for its supporting actors and critical plaudits galore . Following in its training booted footsteps comes Warrior directed by Gavin O’Connor, a film set around the arena of mixed martial arts where two estranged brother’s pasts in the sport, and with each other, collide to become their destiny within the fighting ring.

The story sees ex marine Tommy Riordan (Tom Hardy) return to his hometown of Pittsburgh where he goes back to the family home but does not reconcile with his father Paddy (Nick Nolte) a former alcoholic, whom he blames for driving him and his mother (who succumbed to illness) away. He instead enlists his father as his coach, as he was when Tommy was a child, to train him for MMA tournament Sparta which has a big cash prize, the biggest in the sport’s history, for the final victorious fighter. Meanwhile Tommy’s disconnected brother Brendan (Joel Edgerton), a former UFC Fighter, is working as a physics teacher and trying to makes ends meet. Fearing financial ruin, he reprises his fighting skills and returns to the ring as an amateur. But circumstances conspire and he finds himself the unlikely underdog competing in Sparta and the course is set for a physical and emotional confrontation between the two feuding brothers.

Warrior is a film that wears its heart on its battered sleeve, it puts the viewer through the ringer emotionally yet it is also unrelenting in its depiction of the brutality and violence that the sport commands. Both brothers have a driving motive to win the competition and this brings a human element to an otherwise seemingly barbaric sport. Tom Hardy, bulked up by 28 pounds of muscle for the role (and his forthcoming outing as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises) is inspired casting as Tommy, he is a man literally carrying the weight of the word on his shoulders, haunted by the past, he is a firecracker of pent aggression ready to ignite and explode in the fighting arena. And explode he does, his physicality and presence electrify the screen whenever he is competing. Joel Edgerton is a surprise revelation as Brendan, much like his character, he comes in as the mild mannered nice guy but can transform into steely intensity when pushed into the flight or fight situation. Nick Nolte brings a weary scruffy hound-dog pathos to his portrayal of the remorseful father, as only Nick Nolte can.

The narrative structure of the film follows a well worn path of sporting drama clichés and contrived outcomes yet you forgive Warrior for this. In fact a strange feeling takes over, even in the most discerning cinema viewer, you begin to wish for the inevitable, you hope the narrative takes you where you want to go, you want to fist pump the air getting carried away in all the excitement, you want the nail biting tension from the battles, you want and hope for the redemptive climatic showdown. Warrior appeals to the most primal instincts of cinema, it excites the mind and stirs the heart and who wouldn't get a kick out of that?

Review- The Skin I Live In (Pedro Almodovar)

The transformation of the physical appearance and the obsession it can bring is a subject which has long fascinated and influenced cinema with films as diverse as Vertigo to Face Off. The latest film to rear its modified head on this matter is Pedro Almodovar’s The Skin I Live In, a heady concoction of genres spliced together to create a repellent yet intoxicating mix of drama/horror/science fiction/suspense and dare I say it, romance.

The Skin I Live In begins with an opening shot of a Spanish town, where we are then whisked to a vast residence with a secured gated fence and long driveway, leading to the ominous dwelling. We see that there is a woman, dressed in a skin like leotard, who appears to be a kept prisoner; she is given food through a dummy waiter by the housekeeper, her fluids tampered with some form of drug. It later transpires that the house belongs to a brilliant but wholly unorthodox surgeon Robert Ledgard (Antonio Banderas) who is keeping the woman named Vera (Elena Anaya) as a human guinea pig who he is using to test a new hybrid form of skin, resilient to burns, scars and bites. But the reasons for Vera’s imprisonment are as tightly enclosed as the doors of the mansion that hold her, until an encounter with a stranger, clad in a tiger suit (which even though is explained, is still comically disturbing) blows apart their transmuted environment and the secrets of Robert and Vera’s pasts are revealed in dream induced flashbacks.

To give anymore away would ruin the dark delights of the film, one with many interweaving, contorting plot twists that seem somewhat ludicrous but entirely absorbing. This is attributed to the skill and flair with which Pedro Almodovar directs with his eye for creating arresting, bold imagery and the expertly paced construction of the narrative. He is a director who knows how to compose a film full of daring, risque concepts and will not, and thankfully does not have to, compromise his vision. And there is some risque material to contend with. The assault on Vera carried out by the intruding tiger is deeply distressing but crucial to the story and the shift of power in the house is readdressed. After the vicious attack Robert lets Vera stay in his room, letting down the barriers physically and emotionally, thus causing tension between Vera and Marilia (Marisa Paredes) the housekeeper, who guards Robert like a loyal yet vicious dog, ready to attack for her master.

We then discover the reasons behind the captive Vera and the enigmatic Robert which takes the film in a new direction of melodramatic and horrifying revelations that leads to climatic repercussions. Antonio Banderas showcases acting depths that are rarely tapped in his Hollywood outings, he is a brooding, controlling presence, consumed by the need to avenge past sins, even if these needs drive him to the edge of moral ambiguity, a place he cannot come back from and can only lead to despair. Elena Anaya creates in Vera a beguiling screen presence, her beauty so luminous that she looks like she has been created in a lab, it a fearless performance, every inch of her sculptured body is used to be taken advantage of and to take the advantage herself, behind the fragility is a steely determination for survival. But this is Pedro’s show, in lesser hands the film would have been the fodder of B movie trash or torture porn manipulation but the director is so astutely aware of his material and his mature, visual creativity, that The Skin I Live In becomes a devious, delicious, audacious thriller. The director has described the film as ‘a horror story without screams or frights’ which it readily embraces, the idea of body mutation is one rooted in the realms of psychological horror. The film also bares close comparisons with the 1960 horror Eyes without a Face (directed by Georges Franju) in which a mad scientist consumed with guilt tries to reconstruct his daughter’s severely scarred face by kidnapping young women to use their features for reconstructive surgery. Both feature men drawn to the brink of insanity by grief and longing for their loved ones, there is almost a compassion for these lonely figures, no matter how monstrous and twisted they become.

The Skin I Live In will no doubt confound many viewers, it is an experience that will leave you disorientated upon leaving the cinema, a feeling that may be too much for some but if you let yourself give in to the film, Almodovar will take you on a bewitching journey of revenge and psycho-sexual obsession that will literally get under your skin and stay there for days to come.