 Ryan Gosling stars as a Hollywood stunt driver for movies by day and moonlights as a wheelman for criminals by night. Though a loner by nature, "Driver" can't help falling in love with his beautiful neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan), a young mother dragged into a dangerous underworld by the return of her ex-convict husband. After a heist goes wrong, Driver finds himself driving defense for the girl he loves, tailgated by a syndicate of deadly serious criminals (Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman). Soon he realizes the gangsters are after more than the bag of cash and is forced to shift gears and go on the offense. Storyline: A mysterious man who has multiple jobs as a garage mechanic, a Hollywood stuntman and a getaway driver seems to be trying to escape his shady past as he falls for his neighbor - whose husband is in prison and who's looking after her child alone. Meanwhile, his garage mechanic boss is trying to set up a race team using gangland money, which implicates our driver as he is to be used as the race team's main driver. Our hero gets more than he bargained for when he meets the man who is married to the woman he loves. Written by shin Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Martin Liebman on January 20, 2012 -- I drive. --- Any guy-oriented movie that that emblazons pink titles across its opening shots must be fairly confident in itself. Drive oozes confidence in every fiber of its being. Hello, and welcome, pink titles. The latest from Director Nicolas Winding Refn (Bronson) is Drive, a superbly assembled picture that's one of the year's most enthralling, a movie that, yes, is evidently confident with every passing shot, and it's even more stylistically engaging than it is so openly sure of itself. Few movies are as dynamically realized as Drive. From the opening seconds, the picture surrounds its viewers with unflappable visual perfection, the picture's every frame defining the essence of cool. But it's not flashy. Instead, Drive is one of the more unassuming pictures out there, but it is made so exceptionally well, and its story defined by its always-evident cadence and painstakingly exacting visuals, that one cannot help but to become immersed in its very essence, an essence which actually supersedes the fairly routine specifics of the plot. The result is a movie that's not harmed but rather helped by its unflinching dedication to style-as-storytelling. The plot is a basic one of respect, friendship, love, revenge, mafia, money, skill, and thrills, but it's all played within a structure that emphasizes lingering shots and shadows that define motive, shape the story, and tell the tale. It's a minimalist approach, but a welcome and highly successful approach. Drive is the embodiment of cinema that's reliant on confident style rather than the typical visual and aural distractions so easily constructed within the medium that often only mask shortcomings rather than enhance the whole. Drive's approach greatly amplifies cinematic basics, and morphs what likely would had been in lesser hands a throwaway nothing of a movie into one of the most captivating experiences of the past few years. A ridiculously gifted driver (Ryan Gosling) works as both a mechanic and a Hollywood stunt driver by day, but moonlights as a hired getaway driver who follows strict rules and promises to evade any trouble with the law. He leads a quiet, unassuming life. He keeps largely to himself, only interacting with his trusted boss, Shannon (Bryan Cranston), who enters into deal with a mobster, Bernie (Albert Brooks), to purchase a stock car for The Driver to race. The Driver breaks from his routine when he offers to help a stranded motorist, whom he recognizes as a nearby neighbor from his apartment building. Soon, he finds himself in a friendly relationship with her. She's Irene (Carey Mulligan), a mother caring for her son Benicio (Kaden Leos) while her husband serves his time in prison. Just as their relationship seems to be taking a tun for the romantic, her husband Standard (Oscar Isaac) is released from prison. It turns out that Standard is in quite a bit of trouble with the mob. The Driver chooses to intervene on Standard's behalf for the sake of the woman and child he's grown to love. What follows is unimaginable violence through which The Driver must maneuver and survive if he's to ensure the safety of both Irene and Benicio. Drive's opening minutes are amongst the finest ever committed to film. It absolutely defines that quiet confidence and sure-handed style that runs through the movie and lets the pacing and smartly-conceptualized visuals tell the story. The opening sequence, and nearly the entire film, is shaped by an undercurrent of intensity that hangs over the picture, even in those moments of contentment and unspoken bonds between The Driver and Irene. Through it all is a heavy sense of terrible anticipation and emotional uneasiness, both of which are ultimately realized, though the film remains as intoxicatingly smooth in its most serene and most violently aggressive moments -- on the road and off -- alike. The entire picture remains true to this same basic structure, never once sacrificing its integrity or abandoning its cadence for a flashier action scene. The car chases are extremely well done, fast and powerful and succinct, defined by the rhythm of the engines, the crashing of the metal, and the squealing of the tires, all becoming those scenes' pulse. Meanwhile, the man-on-man violence comes equally fast and brutal but is never drawn further than is required to move the story along. The picture meshes the extremes of violence and tenderness of burgeoning love -- or at the very least deep respect and deeper friendship -- remarkably well. It's a testament to that uncanny cadence that keeps the movie even no matter what the characters are thinking, what's happening, where the movie is, where it's been, or where it's going. In that way, the movie is at its best both in those quiet moments of serenity and through its most devastatingly brutal action alike. Drive is like a heartbeat, rising and falling but always there, quickly returning to a norm whether following a spurt of movement or a moment of pause. In a broader sense, the movie's sets and people are relatively plain. The film works through a rather minimalist approach in its production values, too. It's certainly smooth and polished, but absolutely effective despite its absence of flash. Its characters are only minimally developed on the surface, but their actions, glances, and the film's very essence of photography, lighting, and direction fill them out where the script stops. The cast is remarkable, each playing the movie absolutely straight and uncannily finding its natural, unusual rhythm from the opening frame forward. Ryan Gosling sells the part with a reserved and confident exterior but a far more complex interior, which he does not wear on his sleeve but rather on his back, his symbol of scorpion reflecting the very essence of the thematic structure that runs through the movie. With Drive, it seems the script, actors, and dialogue are only secondary necessities, even as perfectly as all fit into the final product. Words never define the movie, which keeps the audience strictly paying attention and unraveling the story for itself rather than taking another spoon feeding of cinematic fluff. The story, of course, is relatively simple and worn out, but Drive makes mafia and money and double crosses and the like darkly alluring rather than generically boring. This is a movie audiences have seen before, but never seen like this. Everything blends together into one harmonious entity, the violence at peace with the serenity, the motion never at odds with the stillness. Drive is a movie to look at as much as it is a movie to watch; it's the way it shapes the story, not the way it tells the story, that's the highlight, and for as simple a turn as that may be from the norm, it makes all the difference in the world between a time waster a timeless reminder of the simplistic beauty that's the other side of the moviemaking coin. Drive is a fine little movie that's quite unlike most pictures dotting the cinematic landscape these days. It's more style than substance, more confident than profit-driven, but this is a rare case where style is so good -- because it's so reserved and so engaging simultaneously -- that it dwarfs substance, which is fairly shallow but that does become more meaningful the further viewers want to dig. Everything in the movie plays in absolute perfect harmony, the entire thing defined by the smoothest, most faultlessly-constructed visuals in recent memory. Sony's Blu-ray release of Drive features high quality video and audio to go along with five substantive extras. Very highly recommended. Cast Notes: Ryan Gosling (Driver), Carey Mulligan (Irene), Bryan Cranston (Shannon), Albert Brooks (Bernie Rose), Oscar Isaac (Standard), Christina Hendricks (Blanche), Ron Perlman (Nino), Kaden Leos (Benicio), Jeff Wolfe (Tan Suit), James Biberi (Cook), Russ Tamblyn (Doc), Joe Bucaro III (Chauffeur [as Joey Bucaro]), Tiara Parker (Cindy), Tim Trella (Hitman #1), Jim Hart (Hitman #2 [as Jimmy Hart]). IMDb Rating (07/24/14): 7.8/10 from 348,117 users IMDb Rating (01/31/12): 8.0/10 from 114,146 users Top 250: #220
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