Painful to watch except for Cranston and Brooks

Rating: 2/10 (19 October 2012)

Not really any spoilers here. Just minor ones that don't give anything away.
The first five minutes of the movie and you think you are in for one heck of a great film. It was smart, interesting and paced wonderfully. Oh how foolish of me.
You then get slow meandering movie that goes nowhere. The soundtrack was something out a cheesy 1980's movie. The script is dull and boring and creates main characters that are not interesting and don't do anything. Gosling's character dresses like he's in a Member's Only commercial. He chews on a toothpick and broods throughout the film. No real back story is even given to him, the main character, which is needed. I think he has 100 words of dialog through the whole film. Mulligan is sweet and nice and does what she can as the mom who has made bad choices, but is really given nothing to do.
You are then hopeful for the sporadic driving sequences that will populate a movie called Drive, that will make up for the lack of any interesting plot or character development. But guess what, they never come. There are not any scenes involving car chases or anything regarding fancy driving that the character is supposed to be able to do.
The one saving grace, albeit a cumulative of 15 minutes total screen time are Albert Brooks and Bryan Cranston. Cranston, with maybe total 8 minutes screen time, 1/2 of which he shares with Brooks brings a performance that is nuanced and epitomizes the ever trying loser. Brooks also with very little screen time gives a great performance, not because he plays against type, but because he goes with the role and makes it his own.
The film wants to be a character piece, I guess, but you don't really care about or relate to any of the characters. The good thing for Gosling and Mulligan is that they have made better films with better performances so we can maybe overlook this piece of crap.
In the end it degenerates into a revenge movie. You are hopeful for a great fight or cool smart twisty ending, but you get an out of character sloppily directed sequence that confirms the movie you have been watching is garbage. I've seen better endings to a TJ Hooker episode.
I wanted to see the movie based on the actors and some of the misguided positive reviews I read. I feel shafted. I love great movies, good movies and even halfway bad ones. This one was painful, avoid at all costs.
Drive sucks the tailpipe.