It's safe to say that very few American action films these days attain critical success. Perhaps I'm just painting with a broad stroke, but I'm sure that many of us as movie viewers would conclude that the often stereotyped fissure that exists between visceral Hollywood blockbusters and cerebral art-house pictures supposedly separates the "artists" from the "entertainers." However, that is not always the case. By not sacrificing the bullets, bone-crushing fight sequences, or car chases that every testosterone-fueled action viewer loves for the intelligent, cohesive script and performances that every "art film" viewer loves, many filmmakers have broken the mold. Christopher Nolan did so with The Dark Knight (2008) and Inception (2010), James Cameron did so with Aliens (1986), and now Danish-American director Nicolas Winding Refn has done so with his new vehicular-oriented crime thriller, Drive.
Much in the vain of Clint Eastwood's poncho-clad, cigar-smoking Man With No Name, Driver, the lead character in Drive (who dons a sleek, silver sports jacket instead of a poncho), remains inexplicably secretive and otherwise unnamed, and Ryan Gosling ("Crazy Stupid Love," "Blue Valentine") gives a commanding performance of this character. Quiet but effective, swift but brutal, reasonable but firm, Driver leads a double life. By day, he's a legitimate, hardworking chop-shop employee, speed racer, and Hollywood wheelman. By night, though, he's a getaway driver for thieves, a dirty job that goes completely unnoticed until he sparks up a relationship with his next door neighbor, Irene (Carey Mulligan). When her husband, Standard (Oscar Isaac), a recently-released ex-convict who owes various thugs an outrageously large amount of money, seeks Driver's help in pulling off a heist that'll save his wife and son, things go terribly awry. Their plan backfires, and Driver soon enough finds out that he's become involved in a vicious game of cat-and-mouse involving his employer, Shannon (Bryan Cranston), and mobsters Nino (Ron Perlman) and Bernie Rose (Albert Brooks).
Driver may not only remind viewers of the above-mentioned Man With No Name (with a twist of Jason Bourne-style ferocity thrown into the mix), but also the resolute mavericks of the 1960s and 1970s era European New Wave: Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo) from Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (1960) and Mercello Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintignant) from Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist (1970), just to name a few. The film is certainly as stylish and slow-paced as a European crime thriller, but excels by pleasing the adrenaline-filled American audience as well. Refn delivers cleanly-edited, solidly-paced action scenes that are as enjoyable to watch as they are brutal and disturbing. One particular sequence, in which Driver flees an unidentified pursuer (the former in a sporty hotrod, the latter in a shiny luxury mobile) on the open road, is just as impressive a car chase as Steve McQueen in Bullit (1968) or Gene Hackman in The French Connection (1971). Although no massive, Michael Bay-style explosions fill the screen or hyper-stylized edits occur, the close shots of the two cars accelerating, decelerating, speeding in reverse, and bumping into one another are enough to build the tension significantly.
The film does suffer from a few weaknesses. The pulsating, electro-synthetic score could drive away some viewers (no pun intended), while others may simply find it tacky. Also, while Carey Mulligan gives a solid performance, her character remains somewhat unexplored. Irene catalyzes the story's various deadly conflicts, but remains more of an accessory to the plot than an actual independent character. Overall, though, Drive excels where other American crime thrillers/action adventures don't: the style, story, and characters are given as much attention as the blood, bullets, and crumpling metal.
Slick, suspenseful, and well-acted, Drive is an accelerating achievement in the world of modern American cinema. I give it a 8.5/10.
