![](\"http:\/\/media.tumblr.com\/tumblr_lzpx6mMWV41qb5xk2.jpg\")
\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606\u2606<\/p>\nDrive<\/p>\n
\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606\u2606<\/p>\n
Directed by:<\/strong> Nicolas Winding Refn<\/p>\n Written by:<\/strong> Hossein Amini<\/p>\n Based on the Novel by:<\/strong> James Sallis<\/p>\n I get, to a certain extent, what Drive was trying to do. Or, to be more accurate, what it was trying to be. However, the problem that I have with Drive is that it thinks itself exceptionally clever in its design and is therefore often incredibly indulgent.<\/p>\n Drive is about a nameless guy (played with mute inconsistency by Ryan Gosling): a part time stunt man, part time mechanic, part time wheelman, aspiring race car driver. He has a certain set of skills that make him valuable to a certain set of people. We see, early on, how he operates. He\u2019s not a stoic, unflappable kind of guy, but he\u2019s good and that carries a body a long way. We get the sense that he\u2019s maybe trying to find the light at the end of the tunnel, perhaps he\u2019s trying to turn over a new leaf. Perhaps not. Perhaps the line he walks is his comfort zone.<\/p>\n He meets a girl, Irene, a neighbor (played with watery-eyed vagueness by Carey Mulligan), at his new apartment building. She has a son and a husband serving a prison sentence. There are sparks, but he tries to be respectful and she tries to do the right thing, in spite of her feelings. It\u2019s complicated, but perhaps less so than Drive makes it out to be because it tries to express everything in long sequences of unbroken silence. On the periphery of this are some unsavory characters: The driver\u2019s boss, Shannon, (played with talkative enthusiasm by Bryan Cranston), a couple of wiseguys (Ron Perlman and Albert Brooks, both doing much with small supporting parts).<\/p>\n Then Irene\u2019s husband, Standard, is released from jail and he\u2019s in trouble with some toughs he owes money to. The Driver feels protective of Irene and her son, and he has a briefly dealt with but somehow significant connection with her husband as well. He tries to help. At this point in the movie the tone shifts. There is a double-cross. People start dying. Once they start, they don\u2019t really stop. Drive doesn\u2019t have much to use to ratchet up the tension since it seems unwilling to directly threaten the protagonist\u2019s motivating characters (Irene and her son) so it uses brief but often unexpected brutality to serve as a proxy. The Driver\u2019s character starts to unravel here, because we\u2019re so disconnected from him apart from the filter we\u2019ve been given (through Irene), and either the director or Gosling can\u2019t seem to really convey a sense of him.<\/p>\n But then, as if the filmmakers sensed this, they apparently decide to embrace it and just let him be erratic and inexplicable. The movie starts to feel smug in doing so. \u201cLook how edgy this shit is!\u201d is cries. But in the audience we either do that thing, \u201cOh yeah. I get it. I totally<\/em> get it. Yes.\u201d Or, we do the other thing: \u201cWait. What. No. Huh?\u201d And in the end either response is fine because what matters most is that whether we get it (or \u201cget it\u201d) or not, we can\u2019t possibly connect with him. We can\u2019t possibly care all that much. We care through him, for Irene, for Shannon, for Standard, but he is a ghost, a screen that reflects the projections of others but has no function of his own. The signature soundtrack tune plays a couple of times through the movie, embracing this and explaining it in a very clumsy, obvious way by declaring: \u201cA real human being \/ And a real hero.\u201d So, you see, he may be a sociopath, but he\u2019s a sociopath for the right reasons. Which is totally better. Totally<\/em>.<\/p>\n Drive isn\u2019t a bad movie, by any stretch. But it\u2019s not necessarily the movie it should have been, either. I cared more about the Driver character before Irene, at which point I cared about Irene but not the Driver. The fact that both exist in the same movie made both of their stories less than they could have been, and that\u2019s a shame.<\/p>\n from No Thief Like a Bad Movie<\/a> \u2014 February 20, 2012 at 04:54PM<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Drive \u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606\u2606 Directed by: Nicolas Winding Refn Written by: Hossein Amini Based on the Novel by: James Sallis I get, to a certain extent, what Drive was trying to do. Or, to be more accurate, what it was trying to be. However, the problem that I have with Drive is that it thinks itself exceptionally […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=859"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":860,"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859\/revisions\/860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/complete.ironsoap.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}