* * 1/2 (out of five stars) Drive. Written by Hossein Amini, based on a novel by James Sallis. Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn.
Ryan Gosling, not driving in Drive.
Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive comes off the line impressively. A man (Ryan Gosling) sits behind the wheel of a getaway car, suffering through a silent, tense wait as two other guys rob a warehouse. The police are already on the way when they finally get going. Slipping into the night, the driver engages the cops on a moving chess match through the streets of downtown LA as the thieves sweat out the ordeal in the back seat. But when the heat gets too close, the driver just pulls into the garage at the Staples Center and calmly walks away, leaving his clients to their fate.
The scene, which is superbly cut and paced, lasts five minutes, and features not a single word of spoken dialog. It’s terrific, but alas, it’s all a colossal tease, because like a new car that excels only during the test drive, Refn’s film is all downhill from there.
Gosling’s character is known here only as “Driver”. He’s a mystery man with Formula One racing skills and ice-water in his veins. Like that other “Man with No Name”, Driver came from nowhere, has no friends, chews a toothpick, and doles out his words like a miser forced to hand out Kruggerrands. Truth to tell, he’s desperately cool in that Steve McQueen, dorm-room poster sort of way, with an attitude about human connection typified by his longest speech in the movie: “If I drive for you, you give me a time and a place. I give you a five-minute window, anything happens in that five minutes and I'm yours no matter what. Either side of that five minutes, you’re on your own.”
Trouble is, dorm-room posters aren’t enough to sustain a whole movie. Screenwriter Hossein Amini (Jude, The Wings of the Dove) has to give Driver some trace of compassion—in this case, for Irene, a young single mother (Carey Mulligan, at full dimple) who lives in his apartment building. Irene has a young son Driver kind of likes too, going so far as to offer him one of his precious toothpicks. Unfortunately, she also has a convict husband (Oscar Isaac) who comes home early with a lot of prison debt to work off. Driver’s inevitable attempt to free the husband—and therefore Irene—from his past gets him involved in a heist that he can’t walk away from after five minutes.
None of this is necessarily bad, though the way it unfolds is as predictable as a red light following a green. Nor are any of the ancillary players, including Albert Brooks as a noxious small-time gangster or Bryan Cranston as Driver’s hard-luck business partner, particular liabilities. The problem is that there’s too much preposterous gang-banger stuff, too many skulls stoved in by heavy boots and forks stuck in eye-sockets. Being a terrific driver, after all, doesn’t make you a ninja, and it doesn’t need to make you as ornery as Joe Pesci crushing guys with a car door. Driver actually admits he’s good at one only thing: “I don't carry a gun... I drive.” So why isn’t that enough? And why is the ultimate measure of an American male’s devotion how many bones he’s ready to pulverize?
The logic fairy apparently took a few naps while Amini was penning the screenplay. Having Driver administer a beat-down to a wise-guy in a strip club, in full view of God and the girls and everybody, is worth an eyebrow raise. But it becomes truly absurd in the context of a later scene, when he takes the trouble to don a mask to murder another guy—on a deserted beach. I guess Driver is more concerned with incriminating witnesses when they happen to be hermit crabs, not strippers
Reyn, who made the cult hit Bronson, makes visuals with a theatrical flair reminiscent of Michael Mann (Heat, Public Enemies). How disappointing, then, that Refn never gets back to the elegant road poetry he promised in the opening scene. The second or third time Driver metes out street-justice on somebody, we wonder if he’ll ever just put down that hammer and drive.
In perhaps their last chance to have any fun with this premise, Refn and Amini are offered a golden opportunity to resurrect a classic when they have Driver steal a Mustang for his next job. But the ensuing chase—the second and last in the movie—is not only unremarkable, but shows no awareness of Steve McQueen’s Mustang chasing that Challenger through the streets of San Francisco in Bullitt. That’s a missed opportunity so painful it deserves a ticket.
This movie is called Drive, and their character is called Driver, but these filmmakers just aren’t interested in driving.
© 2011 Nicholas Nicastro
No comments:
Post a Comment