From the moment the background score kicked in, i knew i am going to love Drive more than any of my expectations. I'm a big fan of violence on the screen. Not the Final Destination and Fast & the Furious kind of choreographed candy-floss violence but real unflinching human violence. Drive is all that and more. Danish film maker Nicolas Winding Refn bursts into Hollywood with sheer brilliance, blood, gore and all. i've only seen two of his previous 7 films but drive is the best i like. In this time and age of mega budget crappy franchise films, funnily enough this is one film where the studios have scaled down a proposed big budget film starring Hugh Jackman into an indie project. Ryan Gosling brilliantly plays a quiet young man who's 'Hollywood stunt driver by the day' and a 'heist getaway car driver by night'. A man without a name and no history. Ryan gosling's on a roll, he's in every other films lately but then who's complaining. And we're certainly not complaining about the budding bromance between Refn and Gosling. I hope this relationship, 'marriage' as Refn calls it, only keeps growing.
Freshly original and immensly passionate about his craft, Refn is a delight to listen to.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
http://youtu.be/7-6YKewSHH0
A very unconventional film on a conventional premise, Drive is probably the best film of the year. its a genre bending film. There are car chases alright but it's more of cat and mouse play between the cops and the driver than the usual mindless rubber burning hollywood car chases. Typically these chases are accompanied by bombastic high octane music, what you get instead here is 80s style pop. Even the font of the film's title is girly and retro. Most people don't know about Drive or don't care. We watched the film in a near empty hall. Most of the people were there expecting a typical 'action packed' film which they i believe didn't get and every 5 minutes or so, some beefed-up pussy would leave the hall clutching his girlfriend's hand.
Lately Hollywood is drawing a lot from European films and making Hollywood rehash of successful swedish films. Let the right one in directed by Tomas Alfredson and the Millenium Trilogy directed by Niels Arden Oplev have been re done in Hollywood. And then there’s refn with his brilliance. Move over mr. Tarantino, the Vikings are coming.
Do yourself a favour and go watch the film before it's replaced in cinema by some mindless stupid assembly line Hollywood production. It's a film Hollywood would be proud of. It's a film you'd love to watch if you already haven't. As a critic wrote, 'Drive is a film you have seen before but you have never seen it like this'. Enough said.
