Muddy Neon Dreck, Drive is the Harbinger of Doom for Real Cinema.

Rating: 2/10 (25 February 2020)

Drive is representative of an entire subset of movie that has wormed its way into popularity among film buffs. A harbinger really. I've taken to calling it the "Instagram Filter Film". Exercises in the style where "style" is defined as a neon, washed out, out of focus Instagram filter over bland handheld camera work. The Instagram Filter Film also comes with dreary, meditative, vacuous electronic music and performances so subtle, so bereft of emotive risk, that the characters barely even speak at all. The Instagram Filter Film is king. Moonlight, Waves, Under the Skin, and countless other A24 darlings are routinely praised as masterpieces. Online, people frequently cite these films as their ALL-TIME favorite movies. I am baffled, downright perplexed by this sentiment.
Why do people love Drive? It cannot be for the story, which follows Ryan Gosling as a stunt/getaway driver through the seedy L.A. crime scene in a series of drawn-out, boring jobs and stilted-beyond-comprehension conversations. The forward momentum of Drive's plot is broken beyond repair. Dialogue is delivered in long, slow, mumbly fragments. Characters are constantly pausing, staring, freezing in place for seconds at a time. It's a massive directorial failure, stabbing the movie in the jugular and watching the lifeblood pour out. This movie dares you not to fall asleep. People have the audacity to call this thing a thriller. I've seen more thrills in line at the DMV. There are some good actors here, but with the possible exception of Albert Brooks, they are zombies. Ryan Gosling is as bad as he's ever been. I have rarely seen a movie star of his caliber deliver as lazy a performance as this. He fights back against any semblance of human emotion. He's so hung up on being cool, that he forgets the part about acting like an actual human being. I think if director Nicolas Winding Refn had his way, he would have hired a wax statue of James Dean instead. That might have been an improvement.
No, people love Drive, apparently, for its style. Because Drive is "cool" and it looks "cool", and it sounds "cool" and the costumes are "cool". But is it? Refn is clearly obsessed with the superficial elements, at the expense of everything else. And that would be one thing if the superficial elements were interesting. They are not. The music is not my thing. Whatever, I won't hold that against it. But the look. I simply refuse to believe that a human person can prefer the look of Drive to ANYTHING. Pick any movie ever shot on honest-to-God celluloid and it looks clearly, obviously more pleasing to the eye than this dank, murky digital vomit. Seriously, think of the first movie that pops into your head... Good Will Hunting, Lawrence of Arabia, The Cider House flippin' Rules, all infinitely brighter, clearer, more colorful and alive. The mood of Drive is so turgid and mucky and off, I was repulsed by it.
Now the real dilemma I have is that so many intelligent people had the direct opposite reaction. People LOVE this movie. They love the look, the mood, the stillness. It's at times like these when I feel like a Martian. I have no idea what people see in this movie, the same way I have no idea what people hear in mumble rap or taste in kale. Someone telling me they prefer Drive to thousands of other movies is like someone telling me they prefer their food rotten. It's literally unbelievable. I can't see the other side of the argument, sorry. To me, Drive is nothing but a boring, plodding, self-righteous, full-of-crap slog.
23/100