A Multi-Layered Abuse to the Film Industry

Rating: 1/10 (19 September 2011)

So I walked out of the movie Drive. This is the first time I've ever done such a thing. I've seen a lot of bad movies in my day but there has never been one that infuriated me to a point in which I couldn't continue. And being a film lover, I sat down and analyzed just why exactly this movie ticked me off so much. What was it about this movie that drove me up the wall to a point in which I walked out before I even got to see the conclusion? It wasn't the acting. It wasn't the music. And it wasn't the lush cinematography. What irked me the most was that Drive was disguising itself as an indie flick when in actuality it wanted to become an action movie so badly.
And this strategy while an insult to the entire institution of filmmaking, worked. It got rave reviews at film festivals here and there and got nice reviews from critics, lavishing the acting, supposed tension, and cinematography. I watch this movie because of the rave reviews and literally saw the Transporter movie wrapped in an indie flavor, nothing more. The first half, where we supposedly see "character development," consists of characters engaging in extremely minimal small talk and the rest of the time just staring at each other. I am not kidding. After the tense opening which reveals our main character's secret job (which is familiar to the opening of Transporter), we get nothing for about 40 minutes. Except a lot of pointless scenes.
Drive is about a very good stuntman that doubles as a secret driver at night (Ryan Gosling) who silently falls for his new neighbor (Carey Mulligan) while at the same time gets mixed up in a mob scene (which loosely is a Transporter plot). The first half has all the development, only in the second half is when we see all the action and driving you've been observing in the previews. Based off a novel of the same name, the script must have been easy to write, because it barely has any dialogue while the story is pretty much a mashup of Tarantino-like violence with Transporter-like symptoms.
The movie is so inconsistent, and amongst the small pieces that don't fit together they are all sparkles of what we've seen before—and what we've seen before has all been superior. The supposed amazing chase sequences? Bourne and Ronin does them better----and to a similar budget extent, The Transporter. The supposed amazing violent tension? I can name dozens of movies that do it better. And the extreme violence that is inconsistent with the theme, tone, pace, and characterization of the first half of this slum? Of course, while it doesn't quite match the plot it's been perfected years upon years ago by Tarantino and even to an extent Robert Rodriguez.
But another big reason why I dislike this film so much is because with Drive, we've seen it all before, and yet the critics will not point this out—or choose to avoid it. We've seen these types of movies before (quiet men that has their actions do all the talking), we've seen this type of ultra-action before, and we've seen these stupid attempts at conflicting and blending genres far too many times in the indie and mainstream scene. Drive was originally billed as blockbuster during development so what do they do? Hide the fact that it's the clichéd low-caliber blockbuster that's trying so hard to be a European Tarantino hybrid. They trimmed the dialogue, screen time, and for the Cannes Film Festival nixed the action billing and called it an independent film. They literally were changing the packaging and tone of the movie based off of box office numbers. That's disgusting. They were trying to sway the critics by changing the entire genre.
Bottom Line: Drive, you are a pathetic, pointless, stupid, trite, slow, muggy, grudgy, tasteless, senseless, disposable, forgettable movie with abysmal pacing, abysmal writing, and no sense of direction whatsoever from the first second to the last second I watched before deciding to walk away. You don't know what movie you want to become, as you literally spit yourself through at least three different genres that actually repeal each other like a magnet. You barely clock in at 100 minutes, yet it felt like two hours the first half in. I will not blame the acting, for they had next to nothing to work with. I will not blame the cinematography, which wasn't bad either. I will blame the fact that your crew decided to pretend like your movie was artsy, underground, and indie, when in actuality your movie is this ultraviolent action movie that rears its ugly head long after the audience has fallen asleep through the numbing first half.
Your movie sucks.
Bad.