As with La Haine (1995)- not a Hollywood cop out - 'Driver' is for grown ups, who are nuanced and well versed in film

Rating: 10/10 (10 February 2012)

This is very much a film for the grown ups. It forsakes the immature Hollywood conventions of spoon fed expose.
A knowledge of the genre and film history helps to truly appreciate this film's value - The Driver (1978)- is an exceedingly good a cue point for the sub culture inhabited by these 'players.'
The innocents serve to heighten the chasm between normal life and one where the participants in the 'chess game' play for keeps and death is awfully real. The waitress and her small child bring our reality right into theirs. We feel hot breath of killers up close to accentuate and contrast against a mum with her son unknowingly targeted at the centre of a malevolent maelstrom.
Driver successfully coupled the European sensibility of realism and seemingly modest budget, allowing story and the director / camera to be the auteur. The cast hit all the right notes, a top class ensemble performance.
Well something like that. As with La Haine (1995)- not a Hollywood cop out - 'Driver' is for grown ups, who are nuanced and well versed in both the history, connections, references and language of film, including TV productions, historically European and rest of the world outside the US, however, notably vastly improved American TV productions are emerging.