DRIVE Discussion - Page 4

Thank goodness that moron's idea of "courageous and epic" was throwing soft objects in the general direction of people.

Anybody catch the new "What kind of movie is Drive?" TV trailer? Very classy, and gives a much better sense of the film. Can't find it online just yet.

What is all this stuff surrounding this movie? This can't be the cinematic equivalent of Sutter Cane's last book, because I've watched it and I haven't gone mad. It seems to be infecting people left and right though.

In a span of a month the definition of courageous and epic turns from lifting a burning wreck to save a college kid to tossing wieners at professional golfers...I half expect EA to release some relevant dlc in the next week.

This one?

http://youtu.be/sc0nlGQkTjw

 

Agreed, although I'm sorry that great elevator scene is being spoiled for many.  (I went into the movie cold.  No trailers.  Nothing.)

That's it, thanks!

 

But yeah, too bad it spoils the elevator scene even more.

I watched the original trailer several times before seeing the film opening weekend and I felt it perfectly represented what the film would be.  Of course, I knew who the director was and had been tracking the buzz from Cannes and critics for a while.  Why?  Because I'm a passionate film fan and know what I'm getting into when I buy a ticket.  It's sad that this idiots frivolous suit made Film District feel they needed to cut a new trailer.  For example, I wouldn't begrudge or sue an auto parts company if I went out and bought an incorrect replacement part for my car because I didn't do the research and had no idea what I was doing. It would be MY fault for being uninformed.

 

Your whole syllogism crumbles under the fact that you're not a mewling, drooling, mouth-breathing moron. You can't expect that from fellow 'humans'. Lower your expectations.

 

I apologize to everyone who enjoyed this film.  I didn't.  It was tepid to me at best.  A generous 6/10.

 

Brooks is great but could have used more screen time.  Gosling spent far too much time being what I assume was meant to be detached, stoic or possibly even aloof.

Came across to me as more of a disassociated social inept.

 

I felt the script was entirely too pedestrian and absolutely predictable.  While a lot of movies are predictable, I didn't feel the journey in this movie was worth it for me.  ie: I know what's going to happen, I'll just enjoy the ride.

 

Someone raved about the soundtrack.  To each their own but good Lord there was one scene where the song sounded like a dog howling and went on forever.

 

The drama felt more than forced and what little action there is was fine I guess.  Certainly not bad by all means but not the revelation the internet and critics have tried to make it out to be.

 

I too didn't buy into the romance angle.  It was there ever so slightly but seemed to be held in place with this staring.

 

"Hey, wanna toothpick" in my opinion first of all, a terrible gimmick for the film, completely unnecessary.  Second of all, I thought the line ridiculous and completely unbelievable.

Am I supposed to think of him as cool or suave because he has a pocket full of toothpicks and offers them to his neighbor's kid?

 

However, elevator scene is great, there is some good dialogue, and I enjoyed the strip club scene as well as Brooks' meeting with Nino and Cook.

 

Again, my apologies, I enjoy a lot of shite, guess this wasn't my brand.

 

 

No need to apologize for an opinion. Me, I thought Gosling was going for 'disassociated social inept' from the start, and I loved that.

The great thing about the Driver character and about Gosling's performance is that people think he's "detached socially inept" or "psychopathic" or whatever they think, without realizing that this is really just a repetition -- an only marginally re-drawn version of the countless personality-devoid action movie heroes they've appreciated in the movies for a long time. The thing the movie is commenting on is that in action movies, you usually have a blank void of a protagonist (on whom the male audience member can imprint himself) who engages in mostly senseless and excessive violence and actually gets kicks from it (in many ways thinking he is a badass), just as we do as an audience. With Gosling and Drive, the whole approach is done so that we think "how crazy is this guy really, how non-human is all of this" when in actuality it's just a twist on countless prior iterations of the same thing that we've seen before, had no problem with, and even applauded.

 

Challenging genre assumptions is why Drive is awesome, and judging it for not fulfilling them is literally missing the entire point.

 

Edit: Just like Kick-Ass is a postmodern superhero film, in many ways this is a postmodern "classic" action movie. Movies like this are literally the most laudable version of genre cinema I can imagine.

Loved it. Especially the way the music lyrics seem to address some aspects of each scene.

 

Do you think it would've been better if the film ended with both Driver and Brooks lying on that carpark floor?

No. That would have implied that the story of DRIVE is about the Driver and Bernie, and it isn't. Moving from Irene knocking on the door of the Driver's empty apartment, to the Driver literally driving to death (if one accepts that he does die of his injuries) was the way to end this thing.

 

 

 

Not a lot to add that hasn't been said already, but watching a protagonist from a gritty 70's action/drama walk into a Michael Mann film from the 80's and proceed to fall in love with a woman in a very PT Anderson way - and yet have the film feel entirely it's own beast and not a messy pastiche. Wow.

 

Refns just stepped up with the big boys.

 

A revelation. Pure, distilled cinema.

This has played at a local 3 dollar cinema next to where I live for a few weeks and I have watched it a few times.

 

The film is wonderful but I marvel at how Refn's handled Albert Brooks. The man is so good in the role and scary. Its shocking to me.

 

Gosling seems so restrained and contained in the role yet laser guided always present with the other actors. Such amazing work.

 

Have to echo the sentiments about Oscar Issac he brings such humanity and sympathy to such a small role.

 

Mulligan seems in another class than most actresses these days.

 

Bought the soundtrack a few weeks ago its getting a lot of rotation. Love it.

I finally caught this last night and I have to say it easily takes the crown for best of 2011 for me.  Just a fantastic cinematic experience.  From the incredibly tense opening getaway drive ( I really don't think it qualifies as a car chase ) to watching the most beautiful woman in the world getting her head Cobained.  There are just so many great moments here and it's all tied together with such a deft hand.  Refn won a fan for life with this one and I can't wait to see what he does next.  I'll also chime in with some Oscar Issac love.  He took a character I was wholly expecting to hate and turned him into  a real person with such a tragic story.  

 

And speaking of tragic, god did I feel for Cranston's character.  Guy could just never catch a break.

 

I'll also add that the film was just gorgeous to watch, The colours just...popped for lack of a better word.  I don't own a blu-ray player yet (I'm poor), but when I get one this will be one of my first purchases. 

Best, poster, evar.

Holy shit.  It took me several moments to see what was going on in that poster.  Really cool.

That poster is fucking BRILLIANT.

Fan-fucking-tastic!

That's a great fucking poster!

 

Finally got to check this film out - great, great stuff.  This one's definitely a brewer, and it'll take some mulling over before I formulate a coherent reading of it but it takes a relatively simple story and packs it to bursting with so many elements that inform it on a thematic level. How it's driven by contrasts - leads us to think that it's about the cars, the loudness and chaos of the getaways, yet stores its thematic meat and critical conflicts in moments of stillness, as personified by Driver (That scene with him on the phone while gripping the hammer - amazing work by Gosling) The way that the quiet, intimate scenes see Driver show a warmth that has to practically claw its way past his icy exterior; those smiles he gives Irene and Benicio are at once genuine and look utterly painful. The way Standard is constructed as the standard loser ex-con husband, yet arguably comes out looking like the good guy in the love triangle (He goes back to crime, though reluctantly; Driver, we learn, conceals a disturbing glee that comes out during his dirtiest actions) The way Refn not only deconstructs the tropes of Hollywood action/revenge flicks in the story as is, but by making Driver a movie stuntman makes us question whether he himself is acting out these same tropes in the real world and bringing the deconstruction to something almost circular...

 

Oh yeah, I'm going to be thinking about this movie a lot. I can't wait to buy the living shit out of it on blu-ray.

 

 

If Criterion ever decides to option Drive at some point, that poster NEEDS to be the cover.

Loved the movie.

 

Anyone else see parallels to Luc Besson's The Professional? The same sort of dark, lonely, socially awkward character involved in a violent life who discovers joy through a relationship? 

 

Ryan Gosling, though he has been involved with crap lately such as Crazy Stupid Love, continues to show here that he's not afraid of different films like The Believer, Half Nelson, and Lars and the Real Girl.

l

I can see parallels to The Professional in that it is an action movie infused with a very European sensibility. Loved both.

I absolutely loved this movie. It made me think of the Roger Ebert's quote about how movies are not about what they are about, but rather how they are about them. If this movie had starred Jason Statham and been directed by a workman action director it could have easily been just another enjoyable B-action movie. Instead, the material is elevated by the choices made by Refn. The synth pop soundtrack, the stillness of the performances, the sudden burst of violence and the way that the action scenes are well staged and clever without relying on explosions and impossible physics. Soooo good! This is what I love about Refn in general. Bronson, Valhalla Rising and Drive have all been highly stylized with actors behaving in ways that have little to no relation to reality - something that all three films are far more interesting for. In many ways, they remind me of the strange and fascinating tone(s) of Kubrick's films post-2001. I kind of hope that Refn doesn't make the sequel to this that he has been talking about just so I can see what other weird and wonderful things he can create.    

Great poster, agreed.

 

The opening sequence would be one of the best I have ever seen. So good that as the film went on, I was still on the edge of seat waiting for more great moments, but all I got was boredom and revenge porn. Slowly deteriorated...

 

It's a shame because the acting was great and it was so well filmed.

 

Normally I would agree, but if he can continue to toss out a new film almost every year like he seems intent on doing now  (Only God Forgives is filming soon and I Walk With The Dead should be gearing up late this year).................then I have zero problems with him making Driven as long as he is passionate about it.  That said, I won't be heartbroken if he doesn't do it either.
 

 

That 's the shit.

This is such a showcase for Refn and his actors.  The movie is almost better when the screenplay goes away.  There's an exchange early on between Gosling and Mulligan that, had it been different actors and a different director, might have qualified as one of the dullest scenes in the entire year of cinema.  But here it's filled to the brim with energy and emotion.

 

What I mostly took from the film is that Refn is toying with our ideas about this kind of character.  It's almost like this cool anti-hero has been broken down into his component parts, and reconfigured in a sly, ironic, and ultimately uncomfortable way.  He's laconic, a loner, cool; all the things we'd expect.  But, as embodied by Gosling, he's also awkward, almost socially retarded, wearing a goofy jacket that he keeps on even when it's covered in blood and grime.  Not cool.  He's a man of action; which we'd expect, but he's a hyper-violent maniac when his violence is unleashed.  And, in other movies matter of factly, but here rather intentionally incongruous, he's capable of having an old-fashioned, sweepingly romantic relationship.  Plus he's great with kids.  Altogether a combination of traits that is almost ridiculous, but exhibited with such crafty self-awareness that it reads as both a critique and a celebration of the particular cinematic tradition it's instantly become a part of.

So every once in a while I like to go through Amazon reviews and pull up one of the most infuriating ones I can find. I give you

 

 

This movie was an absolute waste of time. Ryan Gosling delivered an extraordinary performance in Crazy Stupid Love, but the writing and directing in this movie were too horrible to be saved.

It's long, it's boring, and there is not an ounce of accomplishment gained by the viewer by the end of the movie. I find it hilarious that "Abduction" got a lower Rotten Tomatoes score (4%) than this (93%) - and those were the critics' votes, not the audience - and Abduction was ridiculously more entertaining than this.

This is the same type of movie as Pulp Fiction, where people say it's great and artsy and hipster, but they really only think that because they don't understand what was going on. This movie was absolutely terrible, and if you're looking for a way to spend your evening, please don't waste it watching this.

I wouldn't call it infuriating, it really seems almost too dumb not to be a joke. I'm sure it's "legit" and all, but it's just so silly I can't take it seriously. I have this thing where I don't mind reading a negative review of something I enjoy; an intelligently delivered, differing opinion is a fine and sometimes challenging thing. I do, however, tend to bail out of reviews that seem to be written (or recorded) by people whose stupidity seems to be some sort of disease, like they go to a doctor and find out that they have cancer of the ability for abstract thought. I dodge out of that shit like they're going to sneeze and get all that stupid on me or something.

They liked Abduction!

They saw Abduction!

Absolutely love the pants of this film. I want my 12 year old to watch it but I think the violence, and more importantly the subtlety is a touch above what he could deal with, plus my boss, his mum would kill me. He's been begging to watch Reservoir Dogs for the same reason (soundtrack gets a lot of play in our car), I want him to have the brain to appreciate an epic piece of movie making that most people will shrug at. Like Tarantino's stuff Drive to me is a movie for people who love movies, and I think he needs to see about fifty odd films before he sees Drive.

 

Bullit's on pay tv tonight, that's a good place to start.

Wow.  This Refn guy's for real.  But that's been covered thoroughly.

 

I had heard that Brooks was a revelation in this, so I expected him to be a big, scenery-chewing villain performance, but what's brilliant about it is that he makes his character more menacing by having absolutely no enthusiasm for his villainy.  He wraps even his earlier moments, before his murderous "reveal", in an air of quiet regret.  With minimal dialogue, you can tell he genuinely likes Shannon, but is a bit uncomfortable around him, since he's given up on trying to figure out how to give the guy a break and doesn't feel good about it.  And that resignation, rather than sleaze or moustache-twirling, gives him a unique energy as a villain that is perfectly in keeping with the old dictum that the antagonist should be a counterpoint to the protagonist.  Whereas Driver, in a certain reading (since he's enough of a cypher to support many), is a young man who is exploring his own affinity for violence and is a little giddy about what he discovers, Bernie is an old man who is so familiar with his own capacity for it that he's absolutely wearied by the need to revisit it.  He's not even something as simple as a sociopath, since it goes past dispassion into actual regret, just not enough to make him hesitate when it comes time to kill whoever requires it.

 

Mulligan too is amazing.  She may even have less lines than Gosling, who is in more scenes, but they communicate a full courtship and relationship with their faces.  It's the best kind of acting, and the type that doesn't get recognized because it's not showy in the slightest.

 

What I'm surprised to not see mentioned here is the possibility that Driver is a few steps down the Autism spectrum.  Not full blown, obviously, but he's sort of a automotive savant and the way his pauses last about two beats longer than they should, moving past "taciturn" to briefly idle in "plain awkward" suggest something more than basic cool guy reserve.  And although it isn't directly stated, if he fixated on The Driver at a young age the way those with the disorder sometimes do with a particular movie/show, it throws his attempts to force himself into the action hero role into a different light.  It should be noted that I have only the most cursory understanding of Autism/Asperbergers, but my first impression was that that subtext was supposed to be fairly blatant.

Just saw DRIVE. It's good for what it is, but I agree it ain't great. Loved the soundtrack. I knew Hendricks' role was small, but Jesus. Oh well. Very nice looking flick. SKYFALL is using the same camera huh? Should be interesting.

Yeah, it's that sense of tiredness that makes Brooks so captivating in the role. It uses a similar device to Ghost Dog, in that the 'bad guys' are really just a bunch of old schlubs while it's the hero who has the distancing, antisocial and almost frighteningly one-track personality.

 

Agree with what you're saying about Driver as well; I think making him a part-time Hollywood stunt driver was a very deliberate character choice on Refn's part. If he isn't autistic, he's definitely heavily influenced by that 'laconic loner' cinematic archetype, to the point where he's pretty much embodying it - how much by choice being up for debate. 

 

 

With whom?

 

Come in here with more than just this, man.

Refn didn't make that choice.  He was a stunt driver in James Sallis' novella too.

Regarding the autism thing: I am also not familiar enough with the autism spectrum to know if that's exactly what they were going for, so I refrained from using that term.  But I definitely picked up on something along those lines (which I called, more generally, social awkwardness); and, in my initial internet search trying to discover if others had similar reactions, I came across this, which I thought was kind of funny...

 

 

(It's also where I found my gosling avatar.)

What more did we need out of Hendricks' character?  Other than time to look at her, I mean.

Nothing. Nobody would be saying anything if it was a no-name in the roll (even a hot one).

Social awkwardness is a thing that happens to everybody to varying degrees.  Driver seems to be wired differently, particularly the way he takes several beats to make the simplest statements, like he's rolling each "yes" or "it's okay" over three times in his head to make sure it's something a normal person would say in his position.  The exceptions being when he's making his "professional" pitch to criminals, which has a practiced, rote feel to it.  And sort of when he blows up at Cranston for accidentally bringing Irene into it, but I'm not sure whether to read anything into that beyond the need to inject a little intensity into what's essentially an expositional scene.

 

Well it was definitely an extreme version of it.  I'm not saying "social awkwardness" covered it, it's just all I was comfortable calling it, especially given how sensitive people are about mislabeling autism.  He's definitely "wired" differently, he's almost like a robot in some ways.  As I sort of said before, my take on it was that it was a kind of "deconstruction" (another term I'm not terribly comfortable using) of the laconic antihero.

It's impressive that the film walks that tightrope between sincerely adding to the legacy of cool, stoic movie badasses - The Man With No Name, LE SAMOURAI, THE DRIVER, THE KILLER, etc. - while also deconstructing that legacy, but without totally undermining it. The film is steeped in the romance and iconography of it, but it's in those moments when The Driver is awkwardly interacting with people, and when the violence erupts, that you get a glimpse of that type of character in a less flattering light and consider the reality of it in a way those other films don't explore much.

Kind of hard to say more of it without repeating what everyone else has said so far in this thread, hence I kept my post brief. The visuals and the kicking soundtrack are the best points. Actors bring a lot more to their sketchy roles. Overall it just didn't grab me, with the hype and praise it got I felt underwhelmed at the end.