Don't expect an action movie. I did, but I got over it.

Rating: 9/10 (16 February 2013)

Drive is the kind of film that sits around in my head, gnawing away like a toothache.
Probably my favourite film of the last twelve months is Tarantino's Django Unchained. But now I've seen Drive and there the two of them are, opposite sides of the fence: Django snarling and snapping, Drive looking stoical.
There's a heist gone wrong, but it's not a heist movie. There's car chases but it's not about the action. It's got a passionate love affair but no sex. The lead character commits criminal acts but he's a hero (and not an anti-hero). There's ultra-violence, but it's not about the blood. There's amazing cars, but they are just, well, good looking props. It's got Wise Guys but it isn't a gangster film.
It used all these things to suck me in, tell its story, and then leave me to obsess over everything unsaid.
It's pointless comparing this to an action movie like The Transporter, or even the films of Tarantino. Better to view it in the same spirit as Scorsese's Goodfellas, Lynch's Blue Velvet, Noe's Irreversible or even the early 1950s western, Shane.
The opening scene is a lesson in how to play out a getaway: no emotional dialogue, no screaming, no panicking, no rants on how the heist went: simply full concentration on losing the police helicopters and squad cars. And I completely believed that Ryan Gosing, cast as the driver, was driving that car.
The violence is not there to bask in the blood or to revel in the victim's downfall, it's an intense burst of emotion boiling into a pure expression of anger. It made me look away, in the same way I would if I saw a couple kissing tenderly on the street, or a close up of a person crying over their dead loved one. It told me I needed to watch this, or at least believe in the conviction behind the violence.
The professional reviewers talked a lot about a 'nuanced' performance by Gosling. I had to concentrate on every look he made; every small change in expression. And I loved it.
And at the heart was a story of love at first sight, the intense yearning for a family, and the lengths a man will go to protect these things - to commit crimes, kill and even give up the girl.
And what of the driver - where did he come from? Was he running? Was he trying to be a different person? Did he know how his life would inevitably end? Did it end?
I'm so glad Drive left me to answer these questions for myself.