2011 driving movieRating: 16/20
Plot: A Driver with No Name is a stuntman by day and a getaway driver by night. Mystery surrounds him. He works at a garage, purchases groceries, and doesn't talk a lot. That is until he befriends his cute neighbor and her young son. Well, actually he still doesn't talk a lot even then. When the patriarch of that little family gets out of jail, our protagonist is sucked into some criminal activity that forces him into a sticky situation. Oh, snap! Shit's about to get real!
With a slightly different feel, this movie would have been a major disappointment for me. Other than some of that terrible modern electronic music we're hearing in every other movie these days and a few quick shots of exploding heads or stomped-on heads that seemed to appear on the screen for nothing but cheap shock value, I really dug the style of this one. Gosling hits the quiet,-too-quiet existential anti-hero perfectly, and like most movies featuring this type of characters, what isn't explained about his character manages to be just as interesting as what is happening on the screen. Ron Perlman and the always-hilarious Albert Brooks are both sufficiently nasty here. The latter, only minimally funny here actually, was especially good, his nastiness rivaling his work in Finding Nemo. While watching this, I couldn't figure out if I was actually liking it very much, but now I kind of want to watch it again to see if it's much closer to being a neo-noir masterpiece than I'm thinking it is. I really like what this director, the Danish Nicholas Winding Refn (What kind of dopey name is that?), does with violence. It's visceral, tough on both of the senses you use to enjoy movies, appallingly beautiful, exciting, disgusting, and usually so quick that it's almost shocking. It's movie violence but somehow manages to transcend normal tough guy fist-pumping movie violence and retain an artsiness that I like. It's hard to explain, but he did the same thing in the equally-engaging Bronson.
I think fans of The Help would probably really like this one.
5 comments:
Great review. It's such a great date movie until the head stomp. I heard he got lessons from the head stomp in Irreversible. Which was one of the most painfully incredible movies I sat thru.
I loved this, the "hero" song was a bit much but did something I loved. I immediately wanted to watch this again. Have you reviewed a movie by Gaspar Noe yet? I've seen Irreversible, an uncompromising vision of hell, and Enter The Void. Please review.
I really liked the cool mood and the acting was solid, but it kind of lost me toward the end (I'm not even sure why). The ultraviolence was shocking, and Gosling was perfect in the role, but so low key that I started being indifferent as to what might happen to him. It might be that going in I was expecting an 18, but ended up with a 15.
I found this movie frustrating because I thought it was half-smart pretending to be smart. I compared it to No Country for Old Men (ordinary people drawn into mob violence, outburst of shotgun violence in a hotel room), which does a way better job of giving the impression that the violence is essential. In Drive, there's no way of reading the kiss in the elevator/head stomp scene as anything other than sex-and-violence eye candy. I didn't figure it was a statement on anything because most of the effort seemed to go into creating an eighties vibe. I really wanted to like it because I think Ryan Gosling was awesome in Half Nelson, and his band Dead Man's Bones is pretty neat. Like you said, it took me awhile to decide how I felt about this movie, but I think by now I've settled on "dissatisfied."
Larstonovich, 'Irreversible' is on the blog from sometime last year. I've been planning on watching 'Enter the Void' since seeing 'Irreversible' but haven't yet...I'll watch it right after I write my chapter.
Cory and Matt, I can see your points...I had actually forgotten that a kiss preceded the head stompin'...I liked everything in that scene except for the kiss.
Oh, Larst, I saw a connection to Noe, but I thought it was the head-blowin'-off scene instead of the head-stompin' one. Have you seen 'Bronson' yet?
Still haven't seen Bronson, maybe I'll watch that now.
Yeah he actually got pointers from Noe on how to make the head stomp. God, the head stomps in both movies will never leave my brain.
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