{"id":118,"date":"2011-11-15T00:40:55","date_gmt":"2011-11-15T00:40:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ewanwilson.com\/?p=118"},"modified":"2014-09-01T19:38:40","modified_gmt":"2014-09-01T19:38:40","slug":"drive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ewanwilson.com\/?p=118","title":{"rendered":"Drive"},"content":{"rendered":"

The film begins with Ryan Gosling, the chillingly cool \u2018\u2018Driver\u2019\u2019, announcing to one of his employers over the phone \u2013 \u201cI\u2019ll give you a five minute window \u2013 anything happens either side of that, and you\u2019re on your own\u201d. The part-time stuntman and full-time stoic dips his leather-clad hands into Los Angeles\u2019 crime world, whilst balancing a lonely social life with running the occasional rubber-burning heist. Like De Niro in Heat<\/em> \u2013 he\u2019s a simple, rigid, self-centred man who runs a strict policy of staying out of trouble and dropping everything and anyone at the sound of the sirens. Like a young De Niro, Gosling portrays a quiet anti-hero, who with toothpick and scorpion-print bomber jacket, is a stylistic role model for any teenage boy (or even a young adult).<\/p>\n

\"drivenew\"<\/a>Like in Heat<\/em>, or the similar Taxi Driver<\/em> – of which the Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn\u2019s film often seems to be consciously channelling – the hero\u2019s soft spot is his heart. It’s the fatalistic by-chance meeting with Carey Mulligan\u2019s \u2018Irene\u2019 that offers the film that much needed humanity and an engaged connection that acts as a release for the \u2018Driver\u2019 between tiresome ruts of criminal dirty work. These moments are by far the most genuine and human, and are shot and captured beautifully by the camera.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t a rip-roaring, supercharged action flick, and anybody expecting so will be disappointed (or pleasantly surprised). The film operates at more of a low, chilled hum, although it is well paced, with some greatly acceleration scenes. The film is a work of pulsating hypnotism, sometimes a little erotic, often erratic, and always beautifully minimal. Unfortunately, for all its visual flagrance, Drive <\/em>doesn\u2019t seem as culturally aware or substantial as any of Scorsese\u2019s early works \u2013 although it is certainly as stylish. There are a lot of interesting influencing tones here, from French and European crime and neo-noir, all the way up to Tarantinoesque brooding violence and some of the flashy neon gun-heroism of Hong Kong.<\/p>\n

Speaking of violence – it does shock, although it\u2019s not at all overworked. The silent quirkiness of the \u2018Driver\u2019 frequently leads to outbursts of psychotic bloodshed, yet they\u2019re offset (quite literally in one scene) by his more heroic, human side. It is within the violent moments that the film lapses most deeply into the realms of the surreal. Gosling\u2019s \u2018Driver\u2019 isn\u2019t crazy enough to kill for crime or money – it’s a real relationship that\u2019s the destabilising element here – he kills for love. The disturbing scenes of ultra-violence are used to break through the trance of an otherwise slow-burning film, just as the Driver acts to transgress the slow monotony of modern life in an attempt to reconnect with what\u2019s important. And like De Niro then, he isn\u2019t willing to drop the \u2018girl\u2019 when the \u2018Heat\u2019 are closing in.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Ron Pearlman and Albert Brooks (whose first credited film happens to be Taxi Driver<\/em>) bring a charismatic, but suitably nasty comical twist to the film, in the form of aged mafia bosses. The modern streets of LA shown here however are in no way synonymous with the gritty realism of Scorsese\u2019s New York, and the flashy editing and European art-sentiments that sometimes agitate\u2013 are mostly for the better. Maybe it’s the somewhat idiosyncratic synth soundtrack, but the enigmatic ‘Driver’ appears in places as an altogether menacing force, whose frequent surges of violence imbue something beyond Gosling\u2019s boyish smile. There\u2019s something a little sinister beneath it all, and at times Refn\u2019s work is reminiscent of the psychological surrealism of a David Lynch or Cronenberg film.<\/p>\n

Drive <\/em>might be a little simplistic, an experiment in style over substance, and all surface and no soul \u2013 but when you have this much style stretched over such a lovely-looking surface, you can only appreciate the fact it hasn\u2019t fallen into the traps of realism or the general comforts of Hollywood . Drive<\/em> has all the right tropes to make it into a bit of a modern cult film. It\u2019s pacey and stylish, and not in the least bit tired.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The film begins with Ryan Gosling, the chillingly cool \u2018\u2018Driver\u2019\u2019, announcing to one of his employers over the phone \u2013 \u201cI\u2019ll give you a five minute window \u2013 anything happens either side of that, and you\u2019re on your own\u201d. The part-time stuntman and full-time stoic dips his leather-clad hands into Los Angeles\u2019 crime world, whilst […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":313,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[29],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ewanwilson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ewanwilson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ewanwilson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ewanwilson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ewanwilson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=118"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.ewanwilson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":314,"href":"http:\/\/www.ewanwilson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118\/revisions\/314"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ewanwilson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ewanwilson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ewanwilson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ewanwilson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}