Timeless, Charming, Brilliant, Witty

Rating: 10/10 (29 September 2011)

This is a moralistic message movie if ever there was one. I, for one, was left mortified and unimpressed. Its flaws could be easily spotted by a cheap robotic drone flying over my native Pakistan.
The picture begins with a bland interlude, a tone poem, if you will, a-la-Joel Schumacher, wherein we are plopped squarely in the middle of a second-rate heist that goes unfinished: interrupted by a nauseatingly 1980's title sequence, replete with a centered hot-pink Casmira 72 point font.
Ryan Gosling uncreatively reprises his role as a Disney television matinée idol, namely "Young Hercules," as he attempts to right the wrongs of the world in one or two fell swoops, using many props, including a hammer, a bullet, a slim-jim, a pair of dainty pleather driving gloves, a watch, a rubber mask, a pair of tap-dancing shoes, and a continual five-o'clock shadow.
The movie evolves from a sweet and tender bildungsromance into a full-fledged remake of Mommie Dearest, wherein Gosling mercilessly torments those who dare to cross his unpredictable moral boundaries.
But if his behaviour is unpredictable, the film is not. On more than one occasion, we are treated to the blaring electronica of a soundtrack of which Giorgio Moroder would surely approve, since he composed the nearly identical score for "Midnight Express."
Suspiciously, none of the characters ever seem to use the restroom unless they are about to get shot in the head. Perhaps they were too constipated with their internal monologues and preoccupied with how their mannerisms would look in slow motion.
Albert Brooks does a grave injustice to his own weak repertoire. While I would agree that "Taxi Driver" was tepid and effeminate, Brooks fit the bill there perfectly. But in Drive, he has re-cast himself as a leading alpha-male mobster and dying patriarch of a now-defunct cinema empire. It is most unbecoming, and his shameless audacity hurts the film tremendously. Brooks has taken the punch out of what could and should have been an Oscar winning character had the role been performed by, say, Penny Marshall or Austin Pendleton or Robin Williams.
How this film ever managed to get a green light without Golan-Globus is anyone's guess. Had Miramax's precursors been around today to offer much needed guidance toward this project, it surely would have been a far better movie, instead of a simplistic infomercial for muscle cars and monster trucks.