Climbing Higher Pictures

Every once in a while, a little film will hit the festival circuit and set off what can only be described as a tidal wave of buzz. Drive may be this year’s indie hit, lighting a fuse so bright at the Cannes film festival that many could see it in serious contention come Oscar season. If you want to preserve the original film experience, stay away from the domestic marketing campaign in any way you can. I have avoided spoilers in the review below, and simply attempt to vocalize my thoughts as I emerged dazed from the screening room.

Drive Review

By Ryan Hamelin

Movie Grade: A

Drive is one of those films that reminds me why I bother to go to the movies at all. In a dark theater, with a bunch of people I didn’t know and may not have had any idea what the film was going to be about, the movie plays better than anything I’ve seen this year. It evokes a level of emotional involvement that is truly surprising, particularly when given its fairly conventional and well-worn components. This is an old school movie, and the retro vibe gives it a timeless quality that should sustain its cult appeal for many years to come. Sometimes it’s obvious that you’re watching something special, and that’s what I got from Drive.

To go through the plot of Drive is to reduce what is at its most powerful a purely surprising experience. I even managed to avoid trailers and clips before my screening, and in this particular case, I can say that I made the right choice. In light of that, I will only reveal a few small facts that are important to understanding why you might want to see the movie, and facts which are revealed within the first fifteen or so minutes anyway and are hence relatively spoiler free. Ryan Gosling plays a stunt car driver for movies who also moonlights as a getaway driver for hire. He works at a garage run by Bryan Cranston who has a great dramatic turn here as part time mechanic, part time surrogate father figure. Gosling meets his neighbor, Carey Mulligan, and her young son, and from there on out, the film never takes its foot off the accelerator or relaxes its ever-tightening grip on your throat. This is some pretty powerful stuff, and it’s because the characters are so well crafted and push the story in such believable and emotionally charged ways. There’s a beautiful simplicity to the whole exercise, without a misplaced line or an unnecessary scene to be found.

Musically, Drive uses an eclectic mix of electronic instruments and a euro-synth flavor that perfectly compliments the feel of the images. The thumping soundtrack makes every shot resonate in a different way, causing some sequences of the lead character just driving around to play like a classic music video. It’s actually hard to describe the sensation you get from some of the moments of perfect audio and visual synchronization. A static shot will drift to one side with a swell, and you’ll find yourself wondering how the filmmaker knew that’s what the music was inspiring in the viewer, until you remember how carefully designed and orchestrated the whole thing is. A lot of Hollywood productions are the result of cramped shooting schedules and shoehorned pre-production, ending up with a half-baked movie that never quite gels. There is no part of Drive that doesn’t belong, and that singularity of vision is exactly what you’d expect from the director behind Bronson and Valhalla Rising. I hope that with this film he will be well on his way towards the domestic recognition he deserves.

If you’re tempted to look up a detailed plot synopsis somewhere, I don’t blame you. All I can say is to trust the filmmaker to give you an experience worth the price of your admission, and go for it. I don’t recommend blind faith often, but you’d be hard pressed to argue that this film doesn’t deliver, and I couldn’t be more excited to drag my friends to it when it makes its theatrical debut. Believe me, you’ll be glad you got in the car.