Art house meets exploitation

Rating: 8/10 (11 August 2016)

Driver is an old type of story. At it's heart we see a loner on a mission of vengeance. Ryan Gosling's Driver like Shane, not much back story is given to this character. Driver lives in a small apartment building where he befriends his neighbor (Carey Mulligan) and her son Benicio (Kaen Leos). The Driver is a mechanic at Shannon's service garage but also a part-time stunt drive and double for films. Shannon runs an illegal getaway service for criminals on the side which he uses the Driver to operate. The Driver has a very specific modus operandi when he act as a wheelman: he shows up at a predetermined time and place, the client has a five minute window to make their way to his car and if they don't make it to his car in the time allotted then he leaves.
Shannon also has ambitions to build a race car with the Driver competing for him. He seeks out financing from a pair of gangsters, Jewish mobsters Nino (Ron Perlman) and former low budget film producer movie producer-turned-gangster Bernie Rose (Albert Brooks). At the same time, Driver meets Standard Gabriel (Oscar Ramirez), Irene's husband who's been recently from prison. Driver finds Standard badly beaten one day and he admits to the Driver that he owes an Albanian mobster money paid for protection while he was in jail. The Driver makes a deal with the mobster called Cook and agrees to help Standard rob a pawn shop in order to pay back Standard's debt but the job goes violently awry with the Driver stuck in the middle trying to protect Irene and Benicio.
Ryan Gosling (Half Nelson, The Place Beyond the Pines) gives a riveting performance as Driver. He's an outwardly calm almost detached seeming persona but he demonstrates a volcano of emotion especially when he's seen taking violent action to protect Irene and her son. Carey Mulligan does holds her own in the story as well considering her character seems a little underdeveloped and maybe even here just to play a damsel. Ron Perlman imbues Nino with a special kind of bitterness. Nino is a man in his mid-50's who feels ineffectual and has an almost adolescent reason for setting everything up in the whole scam out of some desire to prove how truly smart he is. Albert Brooks' Bernie Rose is a no nonsense sadist despise his reasonable businessman persona. Bryan Cranson gives probably the best acting performance as Shannon, the garage owner who employs the Driver and is also the unwitting architect for the events that take place in the second half. Nicolas Winding Refn has an incredible eye and this film is photographed in a beautiful high gloss way. It's style has been compared to the American and European neo-noir of the late 1960's to late 1970's in particular the 1978 Ryan O'Neil film Driver, the 1967 French film Le Samourai and 1967's Point Blank with Lee Marvin.