Drive (2011)

Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
Starring Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Christina Hendricks, Albert Brooks, Ron Perlman, Bryan Cranston

DRIVE has been the recipient of more hype than an underage starlet’s unscheduled nipple slip.

The movie had fanboys salivating at Cannes and the Los Angeles Film Festival earlier this year – no surprise there, thanks to the sumptuous use of local LA scenery – and has built steady awards buzz throughout the summer. An adaptation of James Sallis’s 2004 noir novella of the same name, it’s stylishly told, but whether audiences will connect with its nihilistic world view or prefer to stay home for another game of GTA: San Andreas remains to be seen.

Danish director Refn made a splash with the demented, theatrical, surreal and wholly wonderful BRONSON in 2008, bringing us Tom Hardy’s todger in a CLOCKWORK ORANGE-esque indictment of the British penal system. DRIVE is a journey in the opposite direction, a low-key noir that plays entirely by the rules of the genre and is remarkable for its sheer lack of originality. Refn rips off pays homage to everyone from Peter Yates to Martin Scorsese to John Frankenheimer to Michael Mann, with the latter’s COLLATERAL providing some aerial shot-for-shot inspiration when it comes to depicting Downtown LA. It’s movie-making as genre exercise, Refn flexing his stylistic muscles to present a narrative that hits every visual beat you’d expect from the title, but fails to communicate much of emotional substance.

Ryan Gosling plays the nameless Driver (yes, it’s that kind of movie), who gets his kicks behind the wheel of a car. He doesn’t care whether he’s aimlessly cruising the nighttime streets of LA with electropop blaring full blast from his stereo, or engaging in high speed cat-and-mouse maneuvers on highways in the hills. He drives, he tells anyone who asks, that’s what he does. By day, he dons a creepy rubber “lookalike” mask and serves as the stunt double for a bald action star on movie sets. By night, he works as the wheelman on heists, putting his vehicular skills to speedy use when it comes to evading police pursuit. Like most petrolheads, he lacks social skills, preferring the roar of engines to the buzz of conversation, so he’s not the greatest when it comes to chatting up his cute, lonely neighbor, Irene (Carey Mulligan). Still, he smiles at her a lot.

Inevitably, because this is noir, plenty of shit happens to disturb the Driver’s fragile equilibrium. His manager/mentor, Shannon (Bryan Cranston) decides that the Driver is worth more than the $500/day he gets for stunts, and attempts to launch a track racing team. For this, Shannon needs a suitcase of cash, which he borrows off local gangster Bernie (Albert Brooks). Irene’s husband, Standard (Oscar Isaac), returns from jail and embroils the Driver in a robbery which – you’ve guessed it – spirals back to Bernie. The Driver, who has made it this far in life by refusing to become involved, now finds himself entangled in a web of misplaced loyalties, duty, survival and something (with Irene) that might even be love. He has to be as handy with his fists as he is with a handbrake turn if he’s going to make it out alive.

Ryan Gosling is always more interesting when he’s playing a bad boy, where there’s a tension between his bland good looks and his character’s blatant misdeeds. His blinking beigeness is put to good use here, as the meek, dopey kid from shop class who morphs into a sleek sociopath, kicking an intruder to death in the elevator in front of a horrified Irene.

It’s hard to tell whether Carey Mulligan is brilliantly insipid and useless in order to depict an insipid and useless character, or if she is simply a damp patch on screen. The Driver and Irene barely speak, and instead stand there gazing at each other for what seems like hours. It feels as though Mulligan (who has thus far failed to master an American accent) had all her lines cut, leaving the editor to work entirely with reaction shots. Once again, it’s hard to see what the protagonist finds so attractive in a virtually mute, frightened rabbit Girlfriend character. Mulligan shows less life here than Gosling’s romantic interest in LARS AND THE REAL DOLL.

Christina Hendricks does her best to address the gender imbalance in the form of spunky, pouting Blanca, Standard’s accomplice, but she only manages to utter a few lines before half of her skull gets blasted into a motel wall. Good old-fashioned noir used to be noted for its sultry, complex femmes fatales, so why is it that neo-noir only ever presents us with paper dolls?

As so often happens, it’s left to the older character actors to give nuance to the videogame action that occupies the kids. Shannon and Bernie have been friends for a long time, and have borne witness to each other’s ups and downs. Shannon’s had more downs than ups, and limps awkwardly thanks to a broken pelvis sustained on one of his descents. Cranston and Brooks turn the relationship between these two old-timers, one with all the power, one clutching all the straws, into a stately, deadly tango. They both know how it showdowns before they even begin. Brooks is a revelation, completely transcending his sitcom persona, and should be a shoo-in for Best Supporting Actor noms come awards time.

DRIVE is movie-making by the numbers, albeit by a range of skilled practitioners. It’s a polished genre piece, but at no point does a wheel leave the conventional track. If you like your movies to be as predictable as Euro-pop, as repetitive as Formula 1 laps, as flashy as the Driver’s grey satin, scorpion-embroidered jacket, and if you’ve never seen Steve McQueen make a car into a character, then DRIVE will probably satisfy.

Rating: (3 out of 5):