Movies like the “Transporter” series have elevated the getaway driver to the level of a superhuman action hero, a suave character capable of dodging hails of gunfire and eluding anyone.
In “Drive,” director Nicolas Winding Refn takes the wheelman flick in a different and more realistic direction, creating an entertaining hybrid between a thriller and an art film.
Ryan Gosling stars as a laconic, unnamed stunt man who occasionally moonlights as a driver for heists and maintains a semi-romantic relationship with his married neighbor (Carey Mulligan).
When her husband returns from prison with thousands in unpaid debts, Gosling’s character agrees to help him pull off a job and ends up with a contract on his life and the mob on his tail.
Gosling’s performance is pitch-perfect, portraying a driver that actually resembles a real criminal. He’s a sociopathic loner, and when he speaks, his words are worth listening to. When he says “I’m gonna hurt you,” the look in his eyes tells you he means it.
Like most Refn movies, the film has an extremely deliberate pace that’s punctuated by sudden moments of nail-biting excitement. Refn’s trademark extreme violence is used sparingly, but effectively — it’s hard to look at a hammer the same way again after Gosling’s done wielding it.
The film’s only real problem is that it sometimes veers too far into ridiculous art house territory. Symbolic elements like the driver’s ever-present racing jacket becoming dirtier and more blood-spattered as the job gets worse seemed pulled straight from a film school student’s notebook.
Despite these flaws, “Drive” is one of the most exciting and inventive action films in recent memory, and certainly the best one of the year so far. Unafraid of going into new territory, it hits the gas and never looks back.
