Steady decline over 100 minutes

Rating: 4/10 (6 February 2020)

The Driver starts fairly well, a mysterious hero, a promising plot, suspense, action, and an atmosphere that could make it noteworthy (maybe a bit Light Sleeper like).
As the story slows, we get warning signs that this film will be bad (I do like many movies that are slow with little or even no dialogue as long as they explore something meaningful - this one one is sadly not one of those): the annoying pauses get longer, the acting is getting worse, the chemistry is getting lost and the melodrama just grows and grows and grows: silent movie stars did not exaggerate their acting to this extent. That would still make it an acceptable movie: what do you expect from Hollywood, after all.
But things get worse than expected: the 5-minutes getaway warning gets repeated (word by word, though it still does not make sense), our hero gets violent (not in a believable way), the music is getting bad (do we need to learn from the lyrics that our hero is a great "human being" - repeatedly?) and the nonsense gets unleashed. ***SPOILERS from here - but really there is nothing to spoil***
Senseless graphic violence (gangsters get serially killed by a single person armed with a hammer, a shoe or bare hands - and what about the fork in the eye, really?), long faux-artistic meaningless shots (e.g. scorpion on his back - let's not forget the insult to injury committed by the misplaced scorpoin-frog tale), idiotic lines of action from almost all characters (and the plot in general, like the mob calling Blanche seconds before shooting her?), completely random scenes that are neither believable nor seem to be part of the plot (e.g. kissing and killing scene in the elevator)... all the expectations from the beginning are lost: this is no film noir, no crime movie, not an action movie, not a thriller and not a parody of either of those. Just bad.
And the climax: how come the main villain is completely unprotected during the scene at the beach? And why on earth was Gosling wearing the mask then (when no one can see him: he only covers his face from his victim whom he kills in revenge - how does that make sense?) And how did his car's headlight made the dramatic backlight after the frontal crash when it T-boned the other car off the cliff? And the final scenes with the other bad boss? He lets him stab him in the stomach because...? And then leaves the million bucks there because ...? Is this supposed to be art? Some big raison d'etre statement about ...? What?
Well. Forget it.
Rather: skip it.