Gritty character drama that is unfolded with grace and nuance.

Rating: 8/10 (21 August 2018)

"Drive" reminded me in many ways of another excellent mobster film entitled "Eastern Promises" - both are made with a noticeable level of maturity, in that neither are afraid of moving at their own pace, and both tell a very intriguing character driven narrative which, by chance, happen to revolve around drivers. Events unfold, not slowly, but methodically; there are bursts of violence which disturb us, but it isn't played for entertainment; characters interact with one another realistically, and they get to know one another in ways which we find plausible and inherently satisfying.
"Drive" tells the story of a youngish man, played by Ryan Gosling, living in Los Angeles who works as a stunt man in the local film industry and moonlights as a getaway driver for the common crook. When driving for some petty criminals who need someone to get them out of dodge fast in the dead of night following a warehouse robbery, he is in his element avoiding accidents and dodging the police - as a stuntman, his job under the bright Californian sunshine consists of getting involved in ORGANISED accidents. Perhaps symbolically, he must don masks in order to look like the character which ought to be doing the driving.
The opening warehouse heist itself is a piece of work - untypically for the genre, the film decides to teasingly hang back in the quiet confines of the car as the actual theft happens - it cleverly utilises a two minute shot-clock countdown radiating from the car stereo blaring out a basketball game to crank up the suspense. We have already had it confirmed to us in the opening scene that a smart looking sports car in a sea of old 1950's relics is "very" our lead, inferring an air of modernity in a man otherwise operating in a world of older models.
These particular 'models' consist of borderline acting heavyweights Bryan Cranston; Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman, who are dead-on the right choices for their respective roles when it may have been tempting to merely cast the likes of James Woods; Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. Each of these particular characters come to occupy important, yet dangerous, places in our lead's world: Shannon, played by Cranston, is a film director who employs Gosling's character to do all the stunt work - his limp and twitchy mannerisms, in what is a wonderful performance, exudes a kind of nervousness where there doesn't seem to be the need for any.
Bernie (Brooks), meanwhile, looks to employ Gosling as a stock-car racer - director Nicolas Winding Refn places him above Gosling when they first meet, and lingers on Brooks' outstretched hand as they go to shake for a little too long for it not to mean something. Nino, played by Perlman, runs a local restaurant - he clashes with Bernie, but they are evidently equal in general stature. At home, more importantly still, is Irene (Carey Mulligan), who lives down the hall in the apartment block with a young son and a husband in prison. It is through his interactions with her that Winding Refn tells the story of his lead becoming somebody else, juxtaposing her softly spoken demeanour with the other character who will play the biggest role in this chapter of his life in the form of Bernie, a tough-talking tough guy.
One particularly impressive stroke from the film lies in how Irene's husband, Standard (Oscar Isaac), behaves upon being released from prison. We sensed the film may have gone down a route of depicting a budding relationship between the lead and Irene, only for the husband to re-arrive on the scene and have something to say about it, but it doesn't unfold like that. Moreover, Standard is not merely some psychopath - he appears weak, and is even mired in some money trouble. It is then though these debts that the final act of the film is propelled wherein Gosling's character become more heavily involved than he'd like.
"Drive" is full of various feats of film-making which, for me, places it above most films of its genre. Certainly, the manner about which everybody seems to get along with one another during the opening act is incredibly deceptive in one sense, and I think if the film appears overly-violent; shocking or even completely unpredictable, then it is for the reason that Winding Refn does not unfold the second half of his film with characters behaving symptomatically of how they interacted in the first half.
Additionally, and without giving anything away, what occurs during the raid on the pawn shop catches us totally off-guard because Gosling's character had already been established to be the ultimate professional in getting away from robberies. The opening heist was more complicated; unfolded in a larger building and was at night in the dark, so we expect the pawn shop robbery to run smoothly. The film then goes on to subvert heist genre norms by revolving the last scenes around a character wanting to RETURN the spoils of a theft to its rightful owner as they hunt him down anyway.
Chiefly, "Drive" is a character study with Gosling's nameless driver at the heart of it - he is transitioned from being robotic and somewhat faceless to being someone who cares about somebody else and their predicament. When he agrees to be involved in the pawn shop robbery, he is doing so out of compassion for Irene and the family rather than strictly for the cheque - the traffic rushing by in opposite directions in the background, as he sits in a diner realising this, seems to signify the scrambling his core outlook has just begun to undertake. With its performances; direction and story-telling on top of this, "Drive" is very easy to recommend.