Unlike Anything You've Ever Seen Before

Rating: Null/10 (30 September 2011)

Drive (2011)
**** (out of 4)
A wheelman (Ryan Gosling) becomes close with his married neighbor (Carey Mulligan) and her young son and when her husband gets released from prison he finds himself in debt to a couple gangsters. The wheelman agrees to help out but soon everything goes from bad to worse. To give too many plot points away would ruin some of the fun so it's best that you go into the film with just the basic information. DRIVE was a surprise winner at the Cannes Film Festival and after seeing the picture it's easy to see why because no matter how many movies you've seen it's doubtful you've ever seen anything quite like this before. When people study film history there are always important film that come out and shake things up. Some could point to Jean-Luc Godard's BREATHLESS while many of the recent generations would point to Quentin Tarantino's PULP FICTION. This picture belongs right with those two titles and while watching the film you can't help but feel the originality jumping off the screen with each second. I guess the best way to sum this picture up is that it's an action art-house film. Say what? How on Earth or why on Earth would anyone attempt to make an action picture in an art-house setting? I'm not sure why anyone would attempt this because there are so many ways that you could fail but director Nicolas Winding Refn puts all his chips in the middle of the table and walks away the winner. The film is done in a monotone way and I'm sure this is going to throw many. After all, in today's world you go into an action picture expecting loud noises and explosions but that's not what this movie is about. Instead just take a look at the first sequence when we're introduced to the Gosling character in the middle of a job. Just look at the way the director builds up tension but it's done so in a way that also captures the calmness of our lead character. That calm, cool and collective attitude is something a lot of stars have had but the entire film takes that atmosphere and turns it into something you've never seen before. Even better is the way that there are a lot of silent moments that really build up the drama but they don't do it at a rate to please mainstream action fans. Instead, the film does its own thing and demands that the viewer comes to it. So many times movies are made "for" people so its refreshing to see an original piece that does what it wants and doesn't just give things to the viewer. Gosling is perfect in the role as he nails that quiet, shy side of the character but once that shell is cracked we can also believe all the stuff that follows. Again, I don't want to ruin many plot points later in the movie but watching Gosling here is simply amazing. Mulligan once again delivers a very strong performance and it's refreshing to see a female role given so much respect. Albert Brooks delivers his best work in ages and we also get strong turns by Oscar Isaac and Ron Perlman. The film is a very slowly paced movie, which works perfectly well but there are also some violent scenes that really aren't any more graphic than stuff we've previously seen but they always come out of no where that they really come off unsettling. DRIVE is an incredibly impressive little gem that will hopefully gather more viewers as time goes on.