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.