For a supposedly low-profile criminal, his appearance is unforgettable. Start at the immaculate cowboy boots fastened by skin-tight selvedge jeans, a bit of European style out of sync with the country he calls home. Working past the belt is his trademark quilted bowling jacket, replete with gold scorpion stitched on the back. It runs in sparkling condition (at the beginning of the film anyhow) to his hands, packed into vintage brown racing gloves. These, too, are leather. And mounted on all of this is the matinee-idol head of Ryan Gosling, whose every twitch and mumble will melt teenage girls in the audience, of which there will be many.
The adolescent squeals are merely the bi-product of Gosling's involvement. Nicolas Winding Refn's
Drive is the smartest action film to come out of Hollywood since
Miami Vice; which is to say its less action and more film. It is a meticulously designed and acted pulp story, fussed over to the point of suffocation. For this reason,
Drive is subject to the same criticism that was leveled at
Vice, and previous Michael Mann efforts - that it is more style than substance. Refn would have been wise to give Mann a "godfather" credit in the opening titles - it's become impossibly to watch a neo-noir with a laconic, inscrutable hero without thinking of
Heat, Thief or
Manhunter. As in those movies, the position of buttons on a shirt or their choice of sunglasses is far more important than their murky past.
Gosling (referred to simply as "The Driver" in the credits) is a simple man who does one thing: "drive". Two sorts of people need good wheelmen - criminals and movie directors. So the Driver spends his days on the backlot and his night in the back alleys. The opening sequence is standard to the crime genre - a scheme is pulled off perfectly, at once getting our blood pulsing and proving that our protagonist is one cool cat. As to why someone with a fine day job, or in this case two, as he works on cars for his friend/boss/mentor/father Shannon (Bryan Cranston), would need to risk jail time on the side, its never clear.
Before we're even used to the idea of the Driver as some sort of cold-blooded killer cut from Mann's cloth (or that of his french predecessor, Jean-Pierre Melville), he's become romantically entangled with single-mom Irene (Cary Mulligan). Mulligan's character and performance are where
Drive runs into most of its problems. The release of her husband from jail is the catalyst of the plot, but her all-too-indie bob haircut and adorable son, and the Driver's obvious affection for them, make it hard to buy that he was ever such a bad guy to begin with. Once the well-worn second job has run off the tracks, and Gosling is out in the world killing people any way he can that doesnt involve a gun (A hammer, a knife, and of course, the car itself), there is more than enough fun to go around. Ultimately though, Refn is applying the postmodern, alienated tropes of Mann and others to a story with the moralistic spine of a Technicolor. One would think that the troubles of three little people wouldn't amount to a hill of beans to a driver for hire in a neon-and-black L.A. noir - the entire content of
Drive runs entirely counter to its form.
Be wise and ignore Mulligan - she muddies what is otherwise a superb thriller. The meat of the film is comprised of The Driver matching wits with various levels of baddie, both verbally and physically, in and out of the car, and never with the camera eye at a safe distance. We're right there with him - this is close-range action in the tradition of
The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Dirty Harry and
Point Blank. Here, wisely, Refn eliminates the signs of The Driver being a redeemable character - when those gloves are on, they are proverbially off. The bulk of the budget seems to have been spent on the cast, which besides an avuncular Cranston feature Albert Brooks, Ron Perlman and Christina Hendricks. A car chase ensues on a barren road. Key scenes transpire in an elevator, a pizza parlor and a motel room. Everything resonates more in a vacuum.
Drive has to be the most brazenly commercial film to ever earn best director at Cannes, but that's not to say the jury was wrong. Its a continuation of an unsettling trend; more and more it seems the most American of genres are safer in foreign hands. Following in the footsteps of
Orphan (Jaume Collet-Serra) and
Predators (Nimrod Antal),
Drive sells us our own entertainment from the outside. Masquerading as action director, Refn does a better job than Michael Bay or Chrisopher ever could. Without enough rope to hang himself, fast, fun and didactic beats overblown and overlong every day of the week.
