Title: Drive (2011)

Director: Nicolas Winding Refn

Country: USA

I've slowly become something of a fan of Mr. Refn's works and although I was excited for his newest project Drive, my excitement was tempered a bit by the fact that this was the first film he's directed in which he was not the writer and I was not entirely sure whether that would have any effect on his efforts. Well I can safely report that in my opinion not only has his skills not only not been affected in any negative fashion, but my knee-jerk reaction is to state that his is possibly his best film to date as his skills happily appear to be constantly maturing and delivered quite an excellent piece of film.

I do however find myself in something of a quandary in that as I ponder over the movie I just saw I'm finding it increasingly difficult to talk about it the rather excellent aspects of the film without completely spoiling how the film unfolds. The film itself is constructed in such an economical and extraordinarily detailed manner that to pull too tightly on any given string would I fear cause the entire film to collapse. So...let's talk about the rough aspects of why this film is well worth your time.

Our protagonist is an unnamed driver played with violent serenity by Ryan Gosling who is outstanding in his role. The character is bar none the best driver around and with a stern and steady voice he enforces a strict his way or the high-way policy to the people that hire him to finish off their crimes of choice. He does his job, he does it well, but he does not associate with the people involved and although quiet and seemingly somewhat impassive, when even slightly provoked he will readily infer that a level of extreme violence will most certainly occur if the situation does not cease to his satisfaction. Away from these jobs the driver is quiet, somewhat meek and fairly dispassionate in his dealings of others. He just throws himself into his world of cars as it becomes increasingly obvious that is where he is most comfortable.

This duality of calm serenity mixed with seething violence is explored and dealt with in a largely wordless fashion but in the situations where it does occur it makes a great impact on both the supporting characters and the viewer. The driver initially begins a light relationship with his neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan) and her child as he finds out her husband is serving a prison sentence. Despite his demonstrated aloofness to others he immediately makes not only a connection with Irene but her child as well seemingly fine with just being in their presence. These scenes hint at a great and unspoken need for the driver to belong to something real and pure and Ryan Gosling plays these bits with a great tenderness that greatly belies his character's dark nature. Even with the sudden appearance of Irene's husband being released from prison, despite some of the obvious friction there is still a great tenderness exhibited by the driver as far from feeling pushed away, he still seems somewhat happy just to be near her knowing in ways conveyed only through their tender glances that they share something special.

But there is an element heavily revolving around the driver's every move and one which will drive a wedge between almost every character in the film and that's pure violence. Like many aspects of the film the violence is utilized sparingly, but when it is employed it is incredibly nasty, very much quick and to the point, and very, very brutal. The camera does not shy away from showing you what's happening but cleverly neither does it exploit nor stylize the violence. You see just enough to know how awful it is and how horrible it can be in such an unadulterated fashion. But there's no cool music beating away a tribal beat as our hero takes the bad guys out, no big close-ups of horrific wounds as they spurt arterial spray everywhere, no clever retorts or fancy moves. Just simple, raw, ugly, violence.

This ends up being incredibly effective as coupled with the very sparse use of music in the film, every sound is heard quite clearly and when violence happens you feel it and it hits hard. If somebody gets shot, you feel it and you're shocked even if it's just small character you barely knew. This nasty but effective use of violence also greatly emphasizes just how broken our protagonist might be as the more violence that happens and the closer it comes to affect those he cares about, the more ferocious and out of control he becomes. Yet sadly when others become aware of how intense and dangerous he can be when pushed, it's not nearly as awful as when the driver himself becomes aware of this aspect of his character...and it really just breaks your damn heart.

I very much enjoyed the entire mixture of often frustrating group dynamics that occurred betwixt all the supporting characters as they mixed with the driver. Despite being a fairly simple tale of a job gone bad and things getting out of hand, the way in which people react and treat each other doesn't always go exactly as you would think despite the obvious nature of their characters. When Irene's husband Standard (Oscar Isaac) returns from prison the initial conflict of a three way love triangle is quickly dispersed by not only their involvement in a situation beyond their control, but by some quick and simple scenes which both presents him as a wholly sympathetic character to the driver but to the audience as well thus deflating their initial desire to not see him stick around to muck up our ideal of how we want the romance to progress.

The antagonists in the film despite their outwardly simple caricatures are dealt with in ways you wouldn't quite expect. Albert Brooks is very good in his role as Bernie Rose an old producer of schlocky '80s action films turned small-time mob boss and backing him up quite effectively is Ron Perlman as Nino his go to boy and small-time hood that runs his rackets out of his crappy, generic pizza place. Albert Brooks in particular is remarkably effective as a character that can give off a sarcastic but even-handed fatherly figure type of advice vibe, and yet quickly he will simply and very violently dispatch somebody without giving it a second thought. The way in which he deals out the violence is very telling as well as it's very particularly to the person he is dealing it upon. Even sad Ron Perlman who is generally your typical lunk-headed guy who just sees the opportunity for a big score, manages to score some empathy despite his caveman like outlook with just a few short sentences which exhibit his frustration with how he sees the world.

All of this excellent characterization and violence and all that jazz is of course put together with expert precision by Refn to a level which greatly impresses. Despite the level of violence and despite the multitude of situation revolving around this film, it's all simmers along at a very cool and slow burn pace steeped in a heavy neo-noir atmosphere full of hopeful characters caught up in a fatalistic world. Refn of course injects the film with a heavy dose of s+yle by employing suffused colored lighting and a decent amount of negative space, particularly around Irene and the driver, in order to denote their state of longing and loneliness. I'm not usually fond of slow-motion in film in which it's not for the sake of making action more clearly, but here Refn uses it quite a number of times and yet it fits in perfectly with the mood by giving it this otherworldly sense of calm before the inevitable storm.

All in all I found it to be a great film very much in the s+yle of last year's The American or John Boorman's almost forgotten cl@ssic Point Blank. In that regard if you go in expecting a lot of fast talking, fast living and action, action, action you might be just a tad disappointed. But if you're game for a expertly crafted and highly reflective film about characters caught up in a situation beyond their control, you're going to have a blast.

Go see it.