This surprise winner for Best Director at this year’s Cannes Film Festival could quite possibly be the year’s most riveting thriller. Director Nicolas Winding Rfen spins an arty, moody, broody, almost dream-like tale with intrigue, punctuated with slow-mos that are never overindulgent and a hip and soulful soundtrack that ties everything together oh-so-neatly.
Gosling is an unnamed young driver who holds three jobs. He is a car mechanic, a movie stunt driver and a criminal getaway driver for hire. The film opens with a getaway and extended high-speed chase with the police which set the tone for the rest of the film: Minimal, cool, fuss-free, cleverly-paced. The driver does his job and disappears without a trace. But all this will change when he meets likeable short-haired blonde Irene (Carey Mulligan) who lives down the hall, sort of like an unwilling modern day femme fatale. Irene is married to soon-to-be-released convict Standard (Oscar Isaac), the latter who will later lead the driver into a heist which goes horribly wrong, masterminded by thugs Bernie Rose (Albert Brooks, never better) and Nino (Ron Perlman). Standard gets offed, and it’s up to the driver to get himself (and inevitably Irene) out of the mess.
Gosling seems to have a face impassive enough that it could convey just about any emotion going on behind it. It works in lieu of the unspoken screen chemistry between him and Mulligan. While the driver’s involvement with Irene never quite blossoms into full-blown romance, their restrained longing for one another, carefully constructed by director Winding Rfen so that it never turns into schamltz, is nothing less than heartbreaking. And the moody cinematography by Newton Thomas Sigel (The Usual Suspects) and violent action at play throughout the rest of the film are stupendous. The scene where Gosling stomps the face of a serial killer into bits inside a lift is jaw-dropping, while supporting actors Perlman and Brooks as the two brutes of which the driver runs afoul are quietly menacing throughout. Brooks’ Bernie slices into a new vein of totally uncharacteristic evil, especially through a couple of genuinely gasp-worthy scenes involving a fork, a knife and an antique razor.
Drive cuts deep in all the right places.