(4.5/5)

The Los Angeles in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive is a real place geographically – the garage on Reseda Blvd, the apartment building in Echo Park, the car chases through downtown and the canyon roads, the exit off Cahuenga past the Hollywood Bowl – these are all places I more or less recognize. On the other hand, the almost wall-to-wall techno music (reminiscent of Run Lola Run in its quieter moments), the arty slow-motion and slow-burn pacing of much of the film, and the enigmatic characterization of the main character, known only as “The Driver,” lend a surreal feel to the city I know. And that feeling is mirrored by the film itself. Drive both is and isn’t something familiar, weaving brutally realistic violence in with lyrical beauty, switching back and forth with rapid unexpectedness.

The otherwise unnamed Driver moves laconically between fixing cars at a garage in the Valley, doing driving stunts for the movies, and being a wheelman for robberies. He has simple rules for the latter – he’s there at a certain time and takes responsibility for five minutes of robbery and getaway. After that, the crooks are on their own. The opening sequence (which is excerpted for the Cannes clip so far acting as trailer) is one such job, and it is utter perfection as a self-contained sequence and as a teaser for the film. It balances patience and speed in the chase itself, while also showing with essentially zero dialogue exactly how good a driver this man is, both in terms of actual pedal-to-the-metal precision and street smarts of when to hang back and when to go for it. He drives methodically, but knows the right time to strike.

His boss at the garage (who is also a liaison for the movie stuntwork, having been a stuntman himself in the ’80s) wants to mold the Driver’s potential into the racing circuit, a proposal he brings to some investor buddies of his currently running a pizza shop in Hollywood. Bryan Cranston of AMC’s Breaking Bad plays boss Shannon as a good guy who can’t seem to catch a break, just the world-weary sort of guy who forms the backbone of noir – a genre that Drive plays on the edges of. This plot is interrupted, however, when the Driver starts hanging out with his neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan) and her young son. Most of the lyrical quality comes in here, as their relationship plays out in long takes, glances, smiles, and impromptu trips down to the source of the Los Angeles River.

But reality crashes back in when her husband Standard returns from jail, and needs the Driver’s help doing one last job to get him out of debt to the crime lords in town. What could’ve been a conventional love triangle becomes a more interesting web of relationships that ultimately include Shannon and his financiers as well. For this LA is also surreal in how very small it is – at first it seems like coincidence that the Driver happens to come upon a beat-up Standard in a parking garage, and coincidence that everything in the story connects to the same group of six or seven people. And perhaps it is, and perhaps you could claim that as a fault. But in the heightened reality that Drive ultimately portrays, it feels inevitable. Playing around in the sandbox of film noir, ’70s chase movies, ’80s crime movies, and not a little Two-Lane Blacktop carries its own set of conventions, which Drive honors while also staying quite true to Refn’s own aesthetic from the Pusher films.

It certainly doesn’t hurt to have a cast as strong as this one, with Ryan Gosling channeling Brando again (perhaps a softer, gentler Brando, but with a streak of violence that practically smashes through the screen at times), mumbling charmingly through his scenes with Carey Mulligan and not letting anyone else get away with anything. Mulligan is not perhaps given enough to do, but does well with what she has. The not-quite-love story is perhaps the weak part of the film, and tends to overuse the slow-motion a bit for less of a purpose than I’d like, but it does contrast so nicely with the more brutal parts of the film that I kind of give it a pass. Christina Hendricks is also underused but makes her mark. Ron Perlman and Albert Brooks are both fantastic in their parts, blending a facade of light-hearted banter with the menace they ultimately represent perfectly – and doing it all with a small but well-used amount of screen time. Even though the film really only has about eight people in it, the cast manages to walk that line between individuals and archetypes quite well, lending an epic quality to what is a relatively simple double-crossing story. I’m guessing the blending of tones won’t work for everyone, but in a summer of event-driven comic book movies, Drive‘s slow-burn approach and attention to detail is more than welcome.

Director: Nicholas Winding Refn
Screenplay: Hossein Amini, based on the book by James Sallis
Producers: Michel Litvak, John Palermo, Marc Platt, Gigi Pritzker, Adam Siegel
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Christina Hendricks, Ron Perlman, Bryan Cranston, Albert Brooks
Running Time: 95 min
Country/Language: USA/English
US Theatrical Release Date: 16 September 2011, FilmDistrict