DRIVE (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2011) ***

Rating: 7/10 (30 September 2011)

This first caught my attention by its surprise win of the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival; just this week, then, a local friend also highly recommended it and, since the movie has not yet been released over here, I acquired it via ulterior sources. Actually, it appears that the edition I ended up with was not the finished version but rather a workprint which, instead of utilizing the score composed by Angelo Badalamenti (a pertinent choice given the film's Lynchian tone) for the entire duration incorporated cues from the Oscar-winning soundtrack of THE SOCIAL NETWORK (2010) – a fact that immediately stood out to me while watching – and did not even feature the end credits but rather a blank screen accompanied by more indiscriminate and intermittent music snippets!
Anyway, given the foreign-sounding director's name (of whose previous work I was only vaguely familiar with VALHALLA RISING {2009} and who, coincidentally, has just turned 41!), this could hardly be expected to emulate the Hollywood action formula – so that the ensuing European sensibility that runs throughout baffled audiences not attuned to (or prepared for) it, while delighting those used to movies which employed silence at least as eloquently as sound and speech! Likewise, I had not watched leading man Ryan Gosling in anything prior to this (despite having a handful of lauded films to his name), so I was a bit wary of his supposedly cool demeanor, given the actor's scrawny physique! That said, while I was sufficiently impressed with Gosling's contribution, I still could not reconcile myself to the fact that a stunt/getaway driver should automatically possess the 'angel of vengeance' faculties (though I concede that he is, by necessity, streetwise and quick-witted) displayed by the hero along the way!
Incidentally, while the central character has been likened to Clint Eastwood's Man-With-No-Name in Sergio Leone's "Dollars" trilogy and Alain Delon's similarly enigmatic and taciturn hit-man Jef Costello in Jean-Pierre Melville's LE SAMOURAI (1967), a more obvious model would be Robert De Niro's deranged Vietnam vet Travis Bickle in Martin Scorsese's TAXI DRIVER (1976) – in which, at least, the protagonist's survival tactics can be excused, and we even get an equivalent here of that film's misguided date at the porno theater (which had naturally alienated girlfriend Cybill Shepard) in the elevator 'face stomping' scene (witnessed by the head-shaking heroine, neighbor and impossible-object-of-desire Carey Mulligan) clearly inspired by the notorious visage-squashed-by-fire-extinguisher opening of Gaspar Noe's IRREVERSIBLE (2002). Other easily identifiable links to the picture can be found in Don Siegel's THE KILLERS (1964), John Boorman's POINT BLANK (1967) as well as, it goes without saying, Walter Hill's THE DRIVER (1978), while the hero's chivalrous protection of a lonely woman and her son is borrowed from innumerable Westernsand, yet, it is amusing to just consider how modern film-buffs who staunchly believe that cinema began with Quentin Tarantino will only ever see his influence – in the form of foul-mouthed dialogue, seedy underworld figures, farcical violence and the non-linear structure of the climax! With this in mind, the finale is left open-ended, though the director reportedly stated that he likes to think the protagonist lived on to engage in further adventures in another city (though this would imbue him with quasi-mythical connotations that are incompatible with the unpronounced but very human love story at its core!).
Mind you, the film is one of the best noir-ish thrillers of recent vintage: I was especially reminded of Steven Soderbergh's Elmore Leonard adaptation OUT OF SIGHT (1998) – not least because of the presence (again as a mobster) of Albert Brooks here – even if the Tarantino-worshippers will doubtless point out that he had himself put his stamp on the author's work with JACKIE BROWN (1997)! Other cast members include Ron Perlman (as Brooks' imposing Jewish associate, who gets a great 'exit'), ROBIN HOOD (2010)'s Oscar Isaac (as the ex-convict who seeks to capitalize on Gosling's criminal savvy as payback for the latter's interest in his wife, Mulligan) and, according to the IMDb, Russ Tamblyn (but, for the life of me, I failed to spot him!).