The Evolution of Cinema

Rating: 10/10 (25 September 2011)

My experience seeing Drive was like that of people seeing something like Star Wars when it first premiered in theaters. From the moment it started I knew I was witnessing something unique and new, an evolved film just a bit ahead of everything else. A friend of mine remarked that it's an "indie" mainstream movie, which could not be more on point. Drive has the depth of the most iconic independent features yet has been directed to the masses. It's exciting for me to witness a film like this, defying the rules and bringing everyone something so big with such beautiful restraint. Film is changing. It's mutating into something we've never seen before. But I think we're finally ready for it.
Drive tells the story of an unnamed Hollywood stunt driver working for the movies by day and robbing banks by night. He's a getaway driver and he provides his clients, as we are told in the opening lines, with five minutes. After those five minutes he can and will get them from point a to point b. But he doesn't get his hands dirty; that's not his job. He drives. And thus begins this dark fairytale of a simple man with extraordinary talents and how his world is shaken when he falls for a neighbor and ultimately is set up when obliged to help her ex-con husband.
The driver, played by Ryan Gosling, is a tremendous character, given such little dialogue, yet played with so many layers. Gosling probably has about five pages of lines and not much else. Most actors would complain that they were given nothing to work with, yet Gosling seizes the opportunity for creation. His iconic character is a quiet, introverted man who is genuinely seized with a storm of emotions he is unfamiliar to during the course of the film. There is one shot, after some particularly gruesome business, when he turns around to look at his neighbor Irene, played with touching sympathy by Carey Mulligan. He is bloodstained, trembling, and frighteningly silent, but he has a fire inside of him that pours out of his eyes, displaying a chilling mix of a savage monster and an innocent child. That is what's so incredible about this performance. He perfectly blends a reserved and even bashful innocence with primal viciousness. Ryan Gosling is truly at the leading front of a new level of acting. His driver is an ode to characters like Deniro's Travis Bickle and Pacino's Michael Corleone but with a heightened humanism those other roles at times lacked. This work is complex and scary and absolutely wonderful.
Gosling is supported by an excellent cast, each bringing something refreshing and incredibly truthful to their parts. Albert Brooks' mob boss is a force of its own. Like Paul Newman's character in Road to Perdition, Brooks is a likable villain who will help his friends and take them down without hesitation. He is scary, but not just because he's the bad guy. He's scary because he seems like a real bad guy. Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, Ron Perlman, and Oscar Isaacs round the rest of the cast out, bringing true dimension to what they are given. So rarely are we treated to a movie filled with such talented people, working so hard to give us something so special.
But the acting is only one part of this powerhouse. Director Nicholas Winding Refn has come to form with Drive. His earlier work, Bronson and the Pusher trilogy had flare and incredible skill, but Drive is his real breakout. It's a great example of a director's growth. Everything just comes together in a way that he hadn't done before. The soundtrack, cinematography, even the credits fit so, so nicely. This is film.
He opens the movie up with such a tense chase seen that rivals the drama of the opening of Inglorious Basterds, but he does it with so much style. In Drive, he gives us a western, a superhero movie, and a fantasy in just over an hour and a half. And it flows so well. This analogy doesn't quite do the film justice, but he almost shows us a combination of a music video and a feature length movie. It just has that much grace. I was always on board with his work but now I'm fully on the team. He is someone to watch and I am gushing with excitement about his re-teaming with Gosling for a Logan's Run remake.
Drive is just special. It's not something a review can sum up. It is beautiful; it is a piece of art. Go see it.