A Masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (23 January 2012)

I wish I could give this movie a rating of 500/10 in hopes of balancing the bad reviews. It's startling to see how many people missed the point completely with this one. It seems as though the current state of the movie industry has conditioned the movie-going public to simply want more: bigger, faster, louder and sexier. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good car chase or gun fight as much as the next guy when I'm in the mood for something with a little less substance to pass the time. This is not one of those movies.
Drive stars Ryan Gosling as a Hollywood stunt driver who moonlights as a getaway driver for hire. We don't know anything about him; not his history nor even his name. We get hints throughout the film that he's not exactly innocent, and the opening scene seems to suggest that he drives more for the thrill and challenge than for money. When he meets his neighbour Irene, played by Carey Mulligan, and her son he becomes instantly attached, and will do anything to protect them. This includes helping Irene's husband, who was recently released from prison, do one last heist in hopes that the mob will leave him and his family alone. Through coincidence and misunderstanding, things go wrong, and nobody is safe. The driver's commitment to protecting Irene propels the last act and turns a drama into a revenge flick of the highest order.
Everything is top notch. From the performances to the cinematography to the much talked about score, which gives Drive an undeniably 80's feel, this film is extremely well executed and engaging. Even the quick flashes of brutal violence are well done and serve as jarring punctuations against the slow and almost surreal movement of the film.
This movie seemed to go over a lot of people's heads. Perhaps misleading trailers are to blame and people were expecting something with more cars and more action, but to dismiss a movie when it doesn't live up to a two minute trailer is just not fair. This is not a movie in which every detail needs to be explained, or one that needs to be wrapped up in a neat little package by the time the pink script of the closing credits appear on screen. This is a movie in which we step into a world created by an extremely capable cast and crew, and we watch a story unfold against the backdrop of stunning visuals and a pulsing score. We don't enter at the beginning, and we don't leave at the end; we absorb what's shown to us and are left to appreciate the mystery of the driver and art of a perfectly crafted film. It's a movie in which a small stretch of silence can say so much more than 10 pages of dialogue. And to those of you who say Ryan Gosling does nothing here other than look cool, he's a stunt driver by day and getaway driver by night with a mysterious past: that is the definition of cool.