Like an art movie without an interesting story to tell...

Rating: 2/10 (7 November 2011)

I heard good things about this film from a couple different sources. After a fairly well done opening, I was geared to like this movie. But then every scene following the opening... just... very... slowly... gets... sorta somewhere. We'll get to why in a moment.
The cinematography is beautiful to look at. Everything looks fairly well composed.
The acting. I don't see any flaws here. Every actor is on top of things and delivering.
Action (any scene with action-like elements, whether fighting, or bank robbing, etc), for the most part, this stuff is all good, what there is of it. No complaints here. This probably comprises 20-25 minutes of the entire film.
Then what's my problem? The story. It is such a simplistic story stretched out over its running time and almost all the dialogue scenes are slowly paced. Meaning, an actor says a line, seconds pass, and then the other actor responds or makes some kind of facial reaction. A few seconds later, another line. And this accounts for most of the dialogue scenes, stretch that across the hour and 38 minutes, and the film drags. What might have made a really killer 35-45 minutes is agonizingly boring at 1 hour and 38 minutes.
The pacing reminds me of maybe an art-house film, but without an interesting story (with preferably weird moments, even better if they are preferably weird wtf moments) to back up the slower pacing, what am I being rewarded with sitting through all this? I want to clarify one thing, before anyone thinks I'm just one of those action junkies or MTV generation types who can't stand slow movies... not so. I absolutely love Road to Perdition, which is full of well composed shots, beautiful cinematography, superb acting, and actually has a lot more interesting and emotional things happening through its length. It has many slow moments, but these moments add life to the canvas. Drive, on the other hand, is just boring.