Moments of violence happen everywhere, all the time, and there seems no explanation for most of them. But there are always actions, decisions leading to those seconds and minutes. We just may never know them; their reasons will remain un-divulged by the universe. Be sure they’re there, though, and that a past always proceeds a present.
Ryan Gosling plays the lead character in the new film Drive, unnamed and quiet—a stunt driver for the movies and a car mechanic. He also moonlights as a getaway driver for criminal heists. He has a mantra that he follows for these night-lit jobs: You go in. I start the clock. You have 5 minutes, and I’m yours during that time. A minute on either side of that 5, and I’m gone. He meets a beautiful and kind neighbor, played by Carey Mulligan, and her young, quick to smile son, and that mantra slips from him in a following moment. This moment, laced heavily with his newfound vulnerability, leads to all that comes afterwards—the weighty actions that bring us through the story.
It will come as a surprise to no one that this movie is extremely violent. Nearly every reviewer who has analyzed the film has discussed this. There’s a slow burn to the violence that pervades the end of the story. And it is so shocking because it has taken so long to appear. Gosling’s Driver has been so quiet and coiled throughout the proceedings, but now he is unleashed, brutal and efficient. He is very good at being the kind of violent that the story shows; he is so good at it that one begins to wonder about how he came to be so effective and severe. What in his past lead him to his skill? It certainly isn’t just the part time occupation of a stunt car driver. There has to be more that happened before this. But it’s never divulged in the film. The plot is laser-focused. There are no extraneous details or subplots here to get lost in. The only thing is this story.
The director, Nicholas Winding Refn (Bronson, Valhalla Rising), has crafted a film that seems deeply felt but also deeply illusive. We feel for these characters, however little we know about them through the pieces the story gives us. It's in the glances, the tone of a single word, the lean of a spine. How does one glean such emotion from so little? I’ve done more with less, believe me. This movie pulls viewers into it like simply opening a passenger side door and slipping inside. It’s just that good.
