Drive: A Modern-Day Superhero’s Chronicle

When Peter Parker – the geeky kid from high school who fantasizes about his next-door neighbor Mary Jane Watson – has to save the day, he does it as his alter-ego, Spider Man. When Bruce Wayne – the famous billionaire of Gotham City – leaves the Wayne manor at night, he becomes Batman, the even more famous hero of Gotham City. When Ryan Gosling’s character in Drive, known only as the Driver, drives a car or fights crime in order to protect a boy and his mother, he sports a jacket with a scorpion design on the back. Just as M. Night Shyamalan did eleven years ago with his film Unbreakable, Nicolas Winding Refn has created a modern-day superhero in the character of Driver.

The story centers on Driver (Ryan Gosling), who is a stunt driver and car repairman for his friend and mentor Shannon (Bryan Cranston) by day and moonlights as a getaway driver by night. His life is steady and ready for big things, with the new investment in him as a stock car driver by Bernie Rose (Albert Brooks) and Nino (Ron Perlman) – two men with connections to the mob. Things begin to shake up, however, once he gets close to his Mary Jane Watson – Irene (Carey Mulligan) and her son Benicio (Kaden Leos). As he begins to fall for her and her son, Irene’s husband Standard (Oscar Isaac) is released from prison and forced into doing a job. Driver decides to help Standard for the sake of Irene and Benicio, but when things go wrong, he must do what’s necessary to keep Irene and Benicio safe.

Slow, methodical, careful, composed, rhythmic, stylish, colorful, heartfelt, sweet, and violent: these are words to accurately describe Drive. Not since The Dark Knight back in 2008 have I been this excited to see a movie immediately after I finished it. It’s not flashy like The Dark Knight, it’s not fast-paced, it hardly has a lot of pure gun-slinging violence, and has more in common with David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence than say something like Fast Five. And the film for the most part is very calm and collected, but then violence bursts through those calm walls and so effectively disrupts you as a viewer – it never feels out of place, and feels as though the violence has a purpose to the story rather than just being there. Every ounce of it feels absolutely real, but at the same time, like an otherworldly nightmare.

After the first pulse-pounding, lip-biting, thrills-fueled fifteen minutes which says way more without any words than it could if it had any to say, the romance between Driver and Irene begins to take a front to the story. There’s no doubt that while this film is far from a romance, this will go down as one of my favorites, if not my favorite romance of the year. It’s mainly due to the powerfully subdued performances by both Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan. The film then moves into the main story of the whole robbery gone wrong and Driver’s attempt to protect Irene and Benicio from the bad guys. While the thrilling opening scene was astounding, my personal favorite scene of the film is the elevator scene – which people will understand who have seen it.

A TRUE SPOILER HERE, READ ONLY IF YOU’VE SEEN THE FILM: [spoiler]The second he steps into that elevator with Irene and notices the tan-suited man with the gun in there with them he knows that he’ll never be able to see Irene again, whether it be because he’s dead or because he’ll never be looked at the same way again. So he gives Irene that one, first and last, hugely romantic and intimate kiss before taking the tan-suited man’s head and turning it into absolute mush. The cinematography shows the beauty of a kiss so well. The light in the elevator turns into a spotlight over Mulligan’s face as she becomes stunned by the sudden advance by Gosling, then as their eyes close and their lips meet, the light begins to darken to give it the intimacy of a warm kiss, followed by the aftermath when your eyes open and you stare at each other, the lights become brighter and full of recognition and divinity and all put to the tune of Cliff Martinez’s ambient sound. Without a doubt the single most romantic scene in any film this year, followed by possibly the bloodiest and most vile of the year as Driver turns and kicks the tan-suited man’s head in so many times it turns into squishy brain. Then he turns to see Irene staring at him with fright and disgust, as he stares back with intensity and disappointment in himself that she had to be there to see him do what he needed to do. He knows from thereon, things will never be the same, and even if the two love each other, he could never raise Benicio to be like him for the world. If you love something, let it go… absolutely romantic in the most vile way possible.[/spoiler]

Back on topic…

Ryan Gosling plays his character with absolute perfect attention to detail. This is not something you have seen from him yet. Whether we’ve realized it or not, we’ve come to expect something talky, wild, nervous, and most of all emotional from him. Whether it be his drug-addicted, incredibly likable school teacher in Half Nelson or it be his timid and suppressed Lars in Lars and the Real Girl (which happens to be one of my all-time favorite performances), you have not seen anything like what he has done here.

Whether it is better than his previous performances is up to interpretations, but there’s no denying that his extraordinarily methodical performance as Driver is different from anything he has done. He has begun to show his true professionalism as an actor. With every expression on his face, every blink of his eye, there is an attention to detail and an emotion waiting to breach the surface. While he manages to stay innocent and childlike around Irene and Benicio, he can switch gears with a snap when it comes to killing or intimidating a bad guy, but his personality never changes. He’s fearless and ready for the kill if need be, but he’s not a psychopath (allegedly) like Robert De Niro’s character in Taxi Driver. He’s worse – he’s a hero with a clear goal in mind and not willing to back out of it.

The rest of the cast is a great compliment to Gosling as well. Carey Mulligan is absolutely stunning as the incredibly underwritten Irene. Every quiet moment that she shares with Ryan Gosling’s character, you can feel the love emanating from her, just from her eyes and her hard breaths. She plays Irene so innocently and so sweetly, that you can see exactly why Driver would want to do anything to protect her. Albert Brooks also does a pretty good job as Bernie Rose, the tough and hard-nosed ex-movie producer who now has turned to a life of crime. He’s ruthless and unpredictable, but like Driver, he’s incredibly methodical and on-edge – the perfect arch nemesis, his Lex Luthor. Bryan Cranston gives possibly the most sympathetic performance of the film, taking a slightly underwritten character and turning him into a body of emotion and personality. He and Brooks are neck-and-neck as my favorite supporting players, after Mulligan. Oscar Isaac does a solid enough job as Standard Gabriel, and manages to create one of the most intense scenes when he first meets Driver. See it, you’ll understand. Ron Perlman does a pretty good job as the hard-ass gangster/ pizzeria owner Nino, but gets a little overshadowed by the rest of the cast. Christina Hendricks is a bit wasted in her role, but is nonetheless still good.

The stand-out of this film though is the puppet master himself, Nicolas Winding Refn. There’s a reason he won the Best Director’s award at the Cannes Film Festival this year. Every single shot, every little fiber of this film is so perfectly executed and flawlessly composed. From the use of songs such as College’s “A Real Hero” (which will no doubt become legendary after this film) or Kavinsky’s “Nightcall” as the opening credits song to the tranquil, lingering shots that are sprinkled throughout the film, Refn has created a modern-day masterpiece without a doubt. When you deconstruct the film itself, you’ll get a tense, thriller film, a romance film, an action-y film, and a crime drama wrapped up into a neat hour-and-forty-minute film. While that seems inconsistent, Refn blends the genres so well that it hardly gets noticed, I could not see this film being made any other way. Not another second should be added on or taken away; it is absolute excellence in how it stands.

One final comment to make is how Refn also managed to create a modern-day superhero, which also gives importance to the use of the song “A Real Hero”. The lyrics basically describe Driver as “a real hero… a real human being.” It is like, when he wears his garage clothes, like his stained white tee or his blue denim jacket, he is his Peter Parker, and he only ever really does it around Irene and Benicio or Shannon, his mentor and partner in crime. But when he puts on that scorpion sports jacket, it’s time for crime fighting, or rather crime creating – the anti-hero of his own Gotham City. It’s an interesting thing to go in and watch the film with the mindset of a superhero film rather than an action/ crime drama. All the key points made in superhero films are made within the film. The villain, the love interest, the obstacles, the fighting style – drives, never uses a gun, but does enjoy a good hammer bangin’. This is just one of the many, many ways to interpret the film, as well as the ending (if you think of him as a superhero that is). I’ve heard other theories about how he views his life as a movie, which is why he is a part-time driver for films, and why his personality and acts of violence are so theatrical. Or you could say he is a myth, like the Scorpion and the Frog story that he brings up in the film (which makes sense given the jacket he wears). He comes and goes, like the Man with No Name in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly or Harmonica in Once Upon a Time in the West. And just like those Western anti-heroes, they manage to create this natural aura of mystery around themselves that makes you want to delve deeper into their character and their lives and the story that unfolds around them.

A perfect film, a modern masterpiece.

10/10