NETFLIX MOVIE OF THE WEEK: DRIVE (2011)

*****
18, 100 Mins

A gorgeous, hyperviolent fusion of 70s-style action B-Movie, European Arthouse and pulpy L.A Neo-Noir.

​Everyone’s hunkiest hunk Ryan Gosling – lean and mean in a sizzling silver bomber jacket – stars as the unnamed Driver. The Driver being a strong, silent, stoic loner living on the fringes of the swooning urban paradise of Los Angeles. Driver drives for a living – morning to night he simply drives. The only difference is – by day, he’s a Hollywood stuntman whizzing around in pimped-up vehicles for star-studded studio productions. By night, however, he moonlights chauffeuring a vicious variety of brutish thugs on equally brutal heist jobs.

Driver may be socially inept with almost zero contacts - not even with his criminal superiors. Not that he minds though. After all, Driver just drives the car.
That is, however, until our smouldering protagonist falls for his pretty, fragile neighbour Irene (Carey Mulligan) – a broken woman with a distant 4 year old son and an abusive past involving an imprisoned Alcoholic husband (Oscar Isaac) – who provides Driver with a rare sense of selfless neediness. This becomes particularly evident in the growing bond with son Benicio (Kaden Leos). Seeming to have discovered two people he uncharacteristically cares for, Driver decides it’s time to hang up his crooked cloak and take on the surprising role of family man.

Sadly – once a criminal, always a criminal – as Driver discovers when Irene’s reformed hubby returns home from a long jail sentence fatally indebted to a fearsome, gold-chained mobster by the name of Nino (Ron Pearlman) and on the threat of a grisly murder unless a high-profile robbery was to go ahead. In hope of protecting Irene and Benicio, Drive reluctantly agrees to one final job. Yet - when such a job goes horrifically pear-shaped – Driver finds himself having placed his newly-found family in more danger than one could ever anticipate.

Beyond such a premise instantly inviting scoffs of “seen it all before”, frankly if there has ever been a film by which it’s very own title threatens to mismarket its appeal, Nicholas Winding Refn’s ‘Drive’ (2011) 100% fits such a bill. Based on the cranked-up posters featuring a dazzlingly-lit Cadillac and an even more dazzling Mr. Gosling, any macho male movie-goer or indeed lovesick female high-schooler could be universally forgiven for expecting this visually punchy thriller to be little more than a pre-packaged, petrol-headed action flick along the lines of the testosterone-raging antics of Paul Walker and co.’s frenetic ‘Fast and Furious’ (2002-) franchise.  Of course that is provided one is not an obsessive film buff such as myself and thus not aware of Danish auteur Winding Refn’s past influences upon the European Arthouse scene.

Yes. ‘Drive’ may first and foremost be – at its heart – an aesthetically pulpy B-Movie in the vein of straightforward late 1960s-70s Paul Newman/Steve McQueen-style getaway vehicle flicks (‘Bullitt’ (1968), ‘The Driver’ (1978)). However describing ‘Drive’ as such would almost entirely risk slagging the film off as mere “trash” when in fact this is something every bit more prescient.

Having divided his time between bloodthirsty English-language Exploitation efforts such as ‘Bronson’ (2008) and wildly controversial Danish Arthouse fare expressed in the ‘Pusher Trilogy’ (1996-2005), Director Winding Refn has long lingered in the minds of Cannes-visiting obsessives as a Euro film-maker with a grungy affection for Exploitation Cinema and a visceral debt to the works of early Martin Scorsese, Sam Peckinpah and Roger Corman. However - unlike the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez - whose quasi-fetishistic obsession with plasma-splattering Grindhouse has often felt fatally shallow and derivative - there’s a surreal sense of underlying heart, soul and meditation relevant amongst Winding Refn’s ultra-stylized cinematic flair. This has never felt more of the case than in ‘Drive’ – a scorchingly slick, stylishly sexy blend of Action and Arthouse which represents the culmination of Winding Refn’s career.

Be warned, however. Any ADHD-addled viewer craving a full-throttle, breakneck-paced series of explosion-clogged, kinetic car chases are sure to be bitterly disappointed. Sure, one would really have to be rather oblivious to claim the film is “boring” or like an “art installation”. Yet it would also be a lie to describe the film as a non-stop adrenaline rush of stunt-defying set-pieces.

However - for any Film geek, graduate or fanboy who worships the artistic value of the Medium and its ability to convey an imagery of messages and influences – ‘Drive’ is a swooning, genre-defying, must-see masterpiece. A film with fantastical fondness for the history of populist entertainment itself -combined with a hip, funky sensibility and a hypnotic, dream-like quality of soulful yet grimy urban beauty.

​One only has to catch a single glimpse of ‘Drive’s sprawling, opening wide shots of L.A’s iridescent skyline – richly supported by an intoxicatingly electronic soundtrack – to realise that the film’s most stunningly realized and stirring character may be that of the City of Stars itself. The mouth-watering cinematography paints the heart of Hollywood as an eye-popping blue and gold feast for the eyes in every way one’s initial awe-inspired vision of such a city should be. However – unlike recent L.A efforts such as ‘La La Land’ (2016) which falsely glorify the city as being a self-indulgent metropolis of Material wealth – ‘Drive’ never holds back for one second in portraying the seedy monstrosities and cheated lives shamefully hidden below this Consumerist dream of a cityscape in a stark contrast between the production’s daylight glaze and moonlight grit.

Like Martin Scorsese’s post-Vietnam, New York-set masterpiece ‘Taxi Driver’ (1976) (unquestionably ‘Drive’s greatest spiritual predecessor), Los Angeles here is a viscerally violent, night-time nesting ground for the filth of American society’s most despicable. It’s also a city with a somewhat sickening favouritism for money-minded chauvinists and insufferable ignorance towards those who are not a poster child for Merchandise propaganda.

Majestically providing a meticulous metaphor for the lonely existential crisis faced by hundreds of everyman Americans is a sardonically unshowy Ryan Gosling as a lone wolf behind the wheel – the car’s cloudy window screen being a POV psychological insight into Driver’s disgust and disillusion with the shallowness of the society around him.

In a muscularly physical performance of passive aggressive gestures and few words, Gosling channels Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle in his emotionally distant, Asperger’s-like portrayal of Driver as a quietly gentle individual with a borderline psychotic fire fuming beneath the silent surface. Yet if De Niro’s shaggy-haired, whippet thin, staggeringly unkempt “creepy” cab driver automatically recalled modern society’s woefully ill-judged fear of the disgustingly stereotyped “disturbed lone freak”, this chauffeur is quiff blonde, ripped and embarrassingly handsome - equipped with the heart-throbbing youthfulness of James Dean in ‘Rebel Without A Cause’ (1959) and the grizzled, seen-it-all menace of Clint Eastwood’s Harry Callaghan in ‘Dirty Harry’ (1971).

Having established himself as a “to die for” teenage girl dream in the romantic escapades of ‘The Notebook’ (2004), ‘Drive’ provided Gosling with a star vehicle that allowed him to shed his classic “pretty boy” persona and athletically exercise his meatier character actor chops - his jaw-dropping leading man sex appeal and smooth coolness utterly unscathed of course!

There’s a silently slow-burning fury oozing from Driver which would become a blistering staple of Gosling’s kickstarted A-list career in future efforts such as ‘The Place Beyond the Pines’ (2013) and Winding Refn’s Bangkok-based follow-up ‘Only God Forgives’ (2013).

With his piercing death stares and stances, Gosling terrifically encapsulates a squint-inducing notion of “I could take you out in one go” resulting in the film’s sight-gorging violence coming across as far more grounded and gruelling than your average screen-spreading canvas of comic-book gore. If you’ve always been particularly squeamish for mutilation of eyes or wrists, then all the more reason for watching through your fingers in fight scenes oozing such a blisteringly sadistic intensity that any viewer in their right mind will question going anywhere near a hammer or indeed box-cutter again. It is Winding Refn’s pumping neo-realistic direction interlocked with Gosling’s ultra-masculine bodily acting which allows the audience a grim mental picture of the bone-crunching brutality of the L.A underworld in a way utterly unexpected from traditionally “lowbrow” crowdpleaser fare.

However – for me – ‘Drive’s crucial ingredient which propels the film far above any fellow attempts at 21st Century Neo-Noir has always been that beyond the film’s epochal roots in escapism; this is a quintessential story of tortured, broken, real people struggling to stay afloat in a sun-soaked,  skyscraper-clogged city of crushed ambitions. Unmistakably ‘Drive’s beating organ lies in the heart-melting central love story of Driver and Irene. There’s something bold and bravely inspired in Winding Refn’s casting of Carey Mulligan whose modestly natural, cute yet not classically “model-esque” complexion is a masterstroke of juxtaposition to Gosling’s near-flawless “movie star” image and thus much of the film’s glossed-up, caricaturish characters. Topped off by Mulligan’s endearingly timid innocence and vulnerability, Irene provides a rare inner-beauty and encapsulation of purity in Driver’s seemingly close-minded vision of the world as cold, shallow and bitter.
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The scenes between the two star-crossed lovers are graceful, wrenching and utterly sincere – beautifully and reflectively capturing the status frustration and disillusionment with panache. Arguably the grandest moment to cement the ballad of Driver + Irene as one of cinema’s most beloved pairings comes in a toweringly touching montage of familial bonding and happiness – the most magically surreal moment being a haunting shot of Driver, Irene and son Benicio zooming down the racetrack in that glistening Cadillac – accompanied by the cathartic California sun and the heartstring-pulling electro beat of Desire’s ‘Under Your Spell’. It is moments like this than not only bring self-shaming tears to a film freak’s eyes, but a riveting motivation to keep up their passion forever.