Drive : Movie Review


Ryan Gosling, known only as ‘Driver’ stars as a stunt driver who moonlights as the coolest getaway driver-for-hire in the criminal underworld. He evades the cops with sleek aplomb and drives with skill and stealth. The opening scenes of him evading both on the ground police units and a police helicopter are exciting and nicely directed.

But when Driver agrees to help the husband of his beautiful neighbour, Irene (Carey Mulligan), no doubt in an effort to get into her pants when her husband inevitably goes back to jail, he becomes a target for some of LA's most dangerous men. And this is where the excessive violence starts. When the job goes dangerously awry, the only way he can keep Irene and her son alive is to do what he does best – Drive… and kill people with reckless disregard for life and extreme overkill. Do you really want to see a man getting his head stamped on until his skull is smashed to pieces? No, I didn’t either.

Drive is a violent film that when it’s not being vomit-inducingly, horribly violent is sleep-inducingly boring. Director Nicolas Winding Refn is well known for including a lot of violence in his films but here he also introduces a strong element of boredom. The violence was at least something to make me sit up and take notice of the film, albeit sickeningly, but the rest of the film was as dull as dishwater.
Drive has been garnering plaudits and critical acclaim as well as award nominations and wins but it won’t be getting any praise from me.

Author : Kevin Stanley