"I drive."

Rating: 8/10 (27 February 2018)

Despite the title, the film is not primarily about fast cars and high speed chase scenes. Ryan Gosling's no-name character is a combination mechanic/driver/stunt man with an unacknowledged shady past, and you get the idea that he wants to go straight but hasn't had the opportunity yet. Meeting his neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan) just might be the ticket, but her ex-con husband is something of an obstacle when he's released from prison. With the stars unaligned for for our complicatedly ambiguous hero, the story is set to go in unexpected directions.
I thought the chemistry between Irene and Driver was well played without compromising her marriage in an overt way. When Standard (Oscar Isaac) got whacked, I thought it was just a bit too convenient way for the attractive couple to get together, but the story wisely took things in a different direction. To my way of thinking, I don't think Irene would have made a wise decision casting her future with Driver anyway, that scene of Driver cracking open the guy's head in the elevator wasn't exactly the mark of someone with a lot of compassion if things went against him.
I thought about all those long, slow frames of Gosling with his emotionless expression and I think it worked well for the character. It gives you time to wonder what he was thinking in a given situation, and he seemed to have a lot of those. The few good action sequences of Driver actually driving are well done, but that's not the reason to see the movie. Tune in for an effective neo-noir character study of a man on a mission, who if this was a Western, winds up riding off into the sunset, alone and undeterred seeking a destiny he might never find.