Interesting story, well directed, but with plenty of weaknesses

Rating: 7/10 (1 September 2012)

A silent driver moonlights as the driver for getaway cars for criminals. He has his rules, doesn't want to know anything about anyone, or the crime. In the intro we witness one of those getaways. It's pretty thrilling stuff.
During the day our driver works as a stunt driver for the movies and also at a garage. His boss/mentor/handler is Shannon. He dreams of having the kid drive a race car but he needs 400k to make that happen. He turns to a sleazy mobster- a former movie producer- who in turn is involved with another mobster who runs a pizza place.
One day the driver falls in love with some ugly kid next door and eventually with his mom. But soon thereafter her convict husband is released from jail. One day he's beat up and the driver gets involved for the sake of the kid and the mom. The ex-con owes some protection money to some guy. To get the money he has to rob a pawn shop. Driver decides he will be the driver for the job. The job goes wrong and ex-con is killed. Now driver has a million bucks in his possession.
The universe of this movie is fairly limited so they are forced to create all these coincidences for the sake of the story and to avoid hiring more actors. It turns out that the protector guy is also involved with the two mobsters and the million dollars belong to them somehow. Which means they are going to go after the driver and after the kid and mom if he doesn't deliver the money. Even though the movie takes place in LA, the world of thugs is so small that no one can escape and everyone can be easily found. Driver is now forced to become an ultra violent but suave criminal himself to guard the people he loves.
Drive is very well done for what it is. In fact, with another director, this movie could have been unwatchable. The main character and others don't say a whole lot, you have repeated shots of the guy driving in his car at night, and even more long slow motion shots of the back of his 80s jacket embroidered with a scorpion. Sometimes the director overdoes it, too. When the two main characters flirt, they just stare at each other and smile, that scene goes on just a bit to long, and the shots of the jacket get annoying at some point. So does the music. At first it's enjoyable, but then it gets obnoxious when scenes are put on mute, put in slow motion and with loud music. It is a success that with so little, the director manages to make you care about what happens. Acting is very good overall. Brooks in particular is interesting in this role. This movie isn't perfect or faultless. It's an engrossing movie, with some excellent action scenes, some surprising violence, and plenty of weaknesses, the strangest of all being the ending, where our driver shows his heart of gold, I guess, and that he doesn't care for money but only for love.