Running stationary

Rating: 1/10 (25 October 2011)

Ryan Gosling plays a Hollywood stunt driver who moonlights as an escape car artist for local thugs. He gets involved in the life of his next door neighbor, her kid and the husband who owes money to the mafia boss Gosling's character happens to works for.
The film plays out terribly as the murky and meager plot is all over the place and the pacing of the film so off, it just beggars belief. The many scenes just showing Gosling's blood stained clothes are so slow and stretched that you can see the changing of seasons in the background. And every time our hero starts to talk there's a standard 6 seconds delay before he actually starts to mutter his script lines. Pause in a conversation can add drama to the moment, but I shouldn't have to be tearing the hair from my cranium while watching it.
Action sequences are few and far between and the story itself is done completely by the numbers; excavating only stereotypical behaviour and gratuitous violence from the flimsily drawn out characters. Think of a Tarantino movie you liked, then strip away the interesting characters, the music, the daring plot and sharp dialog. What is left is good cinematography and an incredibly cool choice of font for the end credits.
I'm seriously left dumbfounded as to what prompts people to vote on this miserable excuse for entertainment with more than 6 stars. Perhaps it is the overall quality of films nowadays which seems to be in a hasty decline, rendering people clueless as to what rating to give to a film. But I can safely say that this project is as lifeless as it is artless and I would recommend the 1999 movie Ghost Dog in stead. A movie that shares many parallels with 'Drive' but which is made with far more authenticity, humor and overall class. Not to mention it having an actual silver lining and point to it.
30/100