Drive

Transcript for Review: Drive

IGNATIY:

Now the one film that we’ve been asked about the most is DRIVE; it’s a film that a lot of people are talking about, and with good reason. Ryan Gosling—who really seems to be everywhere lately—plays an auto-mechanic and stuntman who moonlights as a getaway driver for robberies. Gosling’s performance is enigmatic—seemingly easygoing on the surface, but with a violent intensity bubbling underneath. But the real star of this film is the direction of cult Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn, making his Hollywood debut

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Tense and icy, with a chilly synth-pop score, the early scenes of DRIVE recall such classic existential crime movies as Walter Hill’s THE DRIVER and Michael Mann’s THIEF. Once the violence starts, the film becomes a more conventional—though sometimes operatic—thriller. I wish DRIVE’s final half hour was as good as its first forty-five minutes, but I still found the movie to be a fine entertainment.  It’s a thumbs up for me.

CHRISTY:  Thumbs up for me as well. Um, I love the 80s cool vibe here from the hot pink titles to the score as you mentioned to Ryan Goslings silk scorpion jacket; so cool.  Um, I wish the female characters were stronger here.  The only reservations I have with it are Carey Mulligan is really, really miscast.  As she just seems too innocent and not damaged enough, and then it’s a huge waste of Christina Hendricks in like one scene, but I love the punctuations of violence.  It breaks up this languid kind of stoic cool, and yet, it is a hugely stylish movie.