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.

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 A withdrawn character seeping into his little iPod playlist and finding it his only way to express his personality.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!

Talking about that actual "playlist". I do genuinely like the choices. Refn could have lazily gone for Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream and all that belting synthpop from the '80s but instead goes for much newer stuff like Chromatic, Kavinsky and Desire. Results in giving it this like retro zeitgeist feel. An empty generation believing there's no culture for them and going for some nostalgic recreation of the '80s.

You can see the history of it with Michael Mann meets John Hughes but once again freshened up. Carey Mulligan is wonderful as the romantic interest who seems to play off these central characters who are kind of selfinterested and loners. Shame being another amazing example. That too covers a lot of the same ground as Drive. In that one the character just gets completely lost in online porn and casual hook ups whilst navigating the cold world of the 21st century. The result of being over exposed to stimulation in the digital era. Once again a story about love in the age of the computer. Considering all the big hitters of the last few years like Her and Blade Runner 2049 this kind of story continues to find an audience. The characters occupying these worlds could best be described as "byproducts" of their time, a word so inhuman, it's simply Ballardian.

Also, Zane Lowe's disgusting experiment curating his own tracks only serves to add to the films meaning. Whilst I will never watch that version it does illustrate we live in scary world where one can recreate their own playlist for it to fit their needs. Fitter happier, more productive. A patient, better driver. A safer car (baby smiling in the back seat). That really freaks me out for some reason that I'm not sure I fully understand or even want to. In a sense destroying the artists original work to create a more personal experience. Kind of foresees the interactive films that would later arrive such as Bandersnatch. A means to a destruction of an artist's work in a way never seen before. What a nightmarish world we live in.

Some think the driver's jacket with the scorpion jacket is meant to be a reference to Kiss but Refn's said it's something to do with fairy tales, the specific one being mentioned in the film. Don't know enough about those to comment but I do like the way he's viewing it as this dreamy fairytale romance set in LA. Where romantic scenes come alive to music video like montages. In one he reflects on a romance building whilst fixing machine parts instead of being at the party next door. If that doesn't sum up the Ballardian vibe to the film I don't know what else does. The explicit romance with the backdrop of LA should almost come with a parental advisory sticker gives it like a synthy John Carpenter atmospheric cartoonish vibe. Maybe the jacket even comes from Scorpio Rising. Either way like the suits in Reservoir Dogs, it's a uniform and the scorpion some badge of honour like a Samurai symbol. Emphasises his proper disciplined nature along with that 5 minute rule of his.

The brutality of the hammer and the noir recalls the violence of Taxi Driver and maybe even some of First Blood. There's an inner trauma dictating the characters violent actions but in this case isn't Vietnam. It's the over exposure of all terrible news at all times of day. The result of the internet. And I'm sure that will make the boomers laugh. But that's kind of the world that's developed. One in which you have so much access you have to come Jack Nicholson in The Shining A caretaker of the halls of history. Trying to compartmentalise the unfiltered horrors of the past and present. Lost in some grand timeless mess trying to find meaning. That's sort of what the Internet is I think, a timeless mess, a stream of everything and nothing that the mind seeks to make sense of. A prison in which we're handed our own keys. We can leave whenever we like but the desired half in half out is near impossible. It grows more difficult to decide which information we want and what is forced upon us by algorithms dictating our content. That sick and disgusting word.

It is possibly this desire to select information and not let the big companies influence culture that leads us to Zane Lowe's stupid choice to select art so much you can destroy its very nature in some disastrous attempt to regain a sense of control. Tonally the film does switch beautifully between fleeting romance and horrifying nasty violence. The lift scene being the best example. His role as a stunt man becomes only more appropriate here. Essentially, this is an observer distant from reality but occasionally can step in risking his life to be the absolute hero.

The car chases technical virtuosity can't be ignored. Harkens back to classics like The Driver, Bullit and The French Connection. Such an incredible suspense in that opening set piece. That's how you open a movie! As I've said multiple times Drive was all about taking so much iconic 70s and 80s cinema and shuffling it in to a new formation to appeal to the detached and isolated youth of today. It's interesting when you compare it to the work of the Safdie brothers. Those two chiefs are very stylistically similar but their characters are very different. Safdie brothers characters are gamblers living for today, fully aware of the consequences of their actions more than ever before and not caring about tomorrow. Refn characters are ignorant to pretty much everything and willing to risk it all for the answers. No surprise whatsoever that both Safdies and Refn have made highly successful films in the last few years.

Still amuses me though that Refn was so rattled by just how hard Drive hit with audiences that rather than go on to have a successful mainstream career in Hollywood he decided to do a complete inverse of this movie (with Gosling playing a weak mommas boy and even going as far as to wear a different colour shirt) destroying his own creation and we got the absolutely baffling and brilliant Only God Forgives. He's moved to television now and continues to deconstruct himself, favouring long awkward silences over commercial action. I'm sure our kids will laugh at the driver the way we laugh at Travis Bickle. Maybe before then even we will see him as the ultimate parody of ourselves. Regardless, just like the so called 'incel' Travis Bickle for previous generations, The Driver will come a relic of our time whether we like it or not.

Director: Nicholas Winding Refn

Screenplay: Hossein Amini, James Sallis

Cinematography: Newton Thomas Sigel

Music: Cliff Martinez

Production Company: Bold Films, OddLott

Entertainment

Distribution: FilmDistrict

Country: USA

Run Time: 100 mins

Budget: 15 mil

Plot Synopsis: He drives.

Bonus Points:

-The opening heist done as a throwback to 70s car chase pictures but with a modern spin on the well-chosen Chromatics song to add suspsense

-Mann meets Hughes

-The montage where they drive

-All the synthwave

-Hammer time

-The bald freak mask

-Albert Brookes in a non-comedic role

-The Driver's long lasting legacy.

Generational

-Ryan Gosling Overall

4.5/5

Score