Really well done with a unique style

Rating: 10/10 (8 February 2012)

Finally got the chance to see this film after hearing a lot of praise about it, so I decided to watched it, and I think it lives up to it's hype. It is quite hard for me to review this movie. Everything that can be said HAS been said. Why would you even need another opinion? Drive has suspense, romance, great dialogue, and more that will just take up WAY too much time to put into full detail. Even though this movie is very meditative in nature, there are some really cool action scenes. The opening getaway scene may be slow, but has so much suspense in it as The Driver, whose name is never revealed, is a wheelman with a 5 minute window. He starts the clock, listens to the Police radio, and waits for the criminals he is driving for to be done with their heist. One of them gets back while the other is still in the building. This scene causes a ton of suspense. Will he just drive off and have the mission go off? Will the cops arrive? There is also an amazing car chase scene after a critical event in the movie which I thought was awesome.
Like the protagonist, the film's actions speak louder than words. There is dialogue, but what is really memorable is the atmosphere, however, the dialogue is also brutally realistic even though I did think it was a bit odd how The Driver and Irene, the love interest, have huge pauses when talking, but that just adds to the mood of their relationship. I think the director described this movie as being Romeo and Juliet in a modern day setting which is true to some part. Even though The Driver is the bad guy and never talks that much, something heart wrenching comes when you see him get sad or get hurt.
Drive is a great movie that has care for what it wants to be and executes everything well. It isn't flawless. It does some things that bothered me. Sometimes I get the feeling that the film is just TRYING to be too artsy and I just can't stand it when films do that. The violin/opera music starts to kick in and everything goes in slow motion or super fast. I am probably false accusing the movie and I know a complaint like that is off so I wont look down upon the movie for something it never did wrong. I also have a problem that the movie is ultimately missing something. This movie is short and I believe had they at least showed some flashbacks to Driver's previous life, it would have been better. The thing is we don't really know much about him so it is kind of hard to understand him. It is a little over an hour and 30 minutes. Some more would have done this movie good and I thought a little more development in the villains would have been nice. The violence is a little brutal, as explained before there is a scene of a woman's head blasted off, a scene where Driver smashed a guys face down in the elevator, a fork to the eye scene, a few slitted wrists scenes, some stabbings. I think the director was going for shock value and it worked for me but in all honestly, I could have done without that type of violence. I also didn't really like the ending. Not sure but it seemed a little rushed. All in all, a great film but definitely not for everyone.