The Irresistible Charm of The Driver At first sight Drive seems nothing other than a solidly crafted violent b movie. One which you could be fooled in to thinking its overrated. You may ask as Carey Mulligans character does, "Where's the deluxe version?". Yet under its glossy neon surface like fellow recent classic Spring Breakers is something much deeper and reflective. There's a reason this film has become such a beloved classic for an entire generation of movie lovers and because of that there's no denying it's importance. I'm sure after Taxi Driver, many people saw themselves in Travis Bickle. This loner type who was disgusted by what he saw in the sleazy streets. His profession being the perfect view point in to this terrifying world. Having that feeling of wanting to do something but not knowing how or even what. There's plenty of that in the Ryan Goslings The Driver character. Being on the brink of violence that may not have any impact so ever but nonetheless driven and dedicated to see some change like Ethan Hawke in First Reformed, Schrader's modernised Taxi Driver to fit environmentalist concerns. Here we have a nameless dude like the infamous Clint Eastwood cowboy who could represent anyone. He chews on a toothpick like Stallone in Cobra, preferring not to speak and having these cold icy eyes that reveal very little. Mostly silent and losing the ability to communicate in a world where we're constantly exposed to information that we're unable to process. Instantaneous information hitting us like a freight train best demonstrated in Nightcrawler. Our body comes an expressionless avatar and real lives lived online. In effect, it's a subtle modern body horror in which we fight ourselves to reveal just a drop of emotion physically rather than just internally. A repackaged hero of film history who's entire demeanour has come to resemble that 21st century detachment and isolation felt by so many in the modern world.
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Honestly it feels like something from a Radiohead album. Even a Philip K Dick short story or William Gibson. Love and loneliness in the paranoid age of the computer. I always enjoy reading critics who miss the point of a movie cause often what they write is more revealing and useful. Bill Bradley, who believed the film to be highly overrated, wrote that, "Refn spends all the 100 minutes trying to convince you that he has a cool iPod playlist". Weirdly, it's an excellent point and certainly to a large extent the key to its success. A withdrawn character seeping into his little iPod playlist and finding it his only way to express his personality. I mean it's saddo shit but it's bang on the money. This is a dude who just drives. Refn using that to go in to full on existential territory. Gosling who is often wrongfully described as 'wooden' is the perfect way to embody the films messages. He would later work on this persona in Blade Runner 2049 and First Man. The latter being a film I don't think gets the respect it should. To me that was a movie about the search for constant meaning. All your best friends dying just to get on the moon. The Government spending the tax payers money on something potentially pointless. Then you get that excellent scene in which Gosling has to leave behind a Memento on the moon. No one could have portrayed that detached attitude as Gosling drops his "personal items" that probably don't mean anything but he does it because he's been told to. Triumph and meaning is whatever you give it. Sounds absurdist. A stunning existentialist film if you ask me. Existentialism is something Winding Refn tried to do with others like Fear X and Only God Forgives but he never got close to the satisfying narrative of Drive. Perhaps, that's the key to its brilliance. It's a grounded genre movie and yet leaps off in to so many other areas. For me, that's what makes it an improvement on Melville's Le Samourai. There's definitely something of a roaming Ronin in The Driver with Bryan Cranston serving as a potential master. The action growing increasingly erratic without his involvement. They had a good working relationship and the second The Driver goes solo this happens!
