Drive

Drive is ostensibly an action movie. But after seeing it, I think it is far more a film noir than anything else. And it’s a very good film, no matter which category you put it in. So good, that I’m going back tonight to see it a second time.

The plot centers around a man known only as “the driver” (Ryan Gosling), who is a stunt driver for the movies. He can do anything with a car, and supplements his income by hiring out to criminals to drive their getaway car. The driver falls in love with the girl next door, Irene (Carey Mulligan, who never fails to deliver), only to discover that her husband is due back from prison soon. The husband is in a spot of trouble with other gangsters, and their threats against Irene and her son prompt the driver to take on a job that will get the husband off the hook.

Naturally, things don’t go quite as planned. The driver ends up on the bad side of the criminal bosses, and must use all his skills to evade his own death, or the death of Irene.

One of the reasons I put this in the film noir category is that despite the title, there’s not a lot of driving. If I remember correctly, there are only two car chases in the entire film. What sets this at the top of the noir class is that the love story between the driver and Irene is important and well explored.

Ryan Gosling has few lines, because the driver is defined by what he does, not what he says. Irene is his perfect match because she understands him without words. Some of the best acting I’ve seen is in the scenes between them where not a word is spoken. These two actors manage to convey the story with a look or a touch.

Most of the rest of the cast seems to talk continuously. And it’s a four star cast: Albert Brooks, Ron Perlman, Christina Hendricks, Bryan Cranston (_Breaking Bad_). I want to single out Albert Brooks; I normally avoid his movies because he tends to play a whinging New Yorker and that makes me twitch. Here, he plays a crime boss with full menace. A wonderful piece of work. Ron Perlman is a long-time favorite (since Beauty and the Beast), but he plays his character just a bit over the top here.

And there’s the music. So much of the film is told in silence, it was necessary to use the music instead of dialog. It was done masterfully, and allowed the silence to create the mood while the story kept moving forward in the music.

I will only add that there are several scenes of pretty graphic violence. In keeping with film noir, these are not nice people. I could have done with a bit less gore, although this movie is fairly tame compared to the Saw movies. The scenes were short enough that I could gulp and it was over. Your mileage may vary.

I found this a compelling story of two people caught in a bad situation. The acting was first-rate, and there was nothing mindless about either the action scenes or the violence.

My rating: 3.5 stars out of 4