Drive Review

There’s an action we see repeated in Drive: Ryan Gosling’s palm against the wheel, his fingers curling in tightly, extending, then curling back inward tighter. Drive is like that; most of the time it seems like not much is happening, but beneath its pulse is a furious heartbeat.

Drive is about a solitary man (Ryan Gosling, listed in the credits as simply “Driver”) who lives behind the wheel. By day he drives as a stunt man for the movies and works at a garage shop with Shannon (Bryan Cranston). By night, at times, he’s as a wheel man with a specific set of rules: “If I drive for you, you give me a time and a place. I give you a five-minute window, anything happens in that five minutes and I’m yours no matter what. I don’t sit in while you’re running it down; I don’t carry a gun … I drive.”

There’s a distant hope for Driver. He begins to spend time with his neighbour Irene (Carey Mulligan) and her son Benicio. Shannon asks a local crime boss (Albert Brooks) to sponsor a Daytona-style racing team with Driver doing what he does best – driving. Shannon’s described as “not having a lot of luck.” We hope that will change.

Entertainment Weekly quoted director Nicolas Windin Refn as saying “This is the film. It’s about a guy who drives around at night listening to pop music because it’s the only way he can feel anything.”

Refn isn’t afraid to show how lifeless Driver’s world is. Driver seldom speaks or answers people even when it seems he should. We hear his brief monologue at the beginning of the movie, but don’t see his lips move. It’s a long while before he says anything again. It’s the extreme version of what I love to see in movies: letting actions and images define characters. In one scene – like when he’s in Irene’s apartment – his eyes are fixated out the window on the streets below. When he comes back to his own apartment after a job he enters the doorway and stands in front of the bed. He looks down at the emptiness of the room and seems to consider staying there. In the quiet. Alone. He turns around and gets back in the car. The inordinate quiet Drive utilizes amplifies the action sequences later. You become so accustomed to slow, precise, plodding steps that the change to “sprint” is exhilarating. But Drive‘s meticulous architecture isn’t for everyone.

The soundtrack on the other hand might be. Great movies often have better soundtracks and Drive uses its purposefully. The soundtrack title Tick of the Clock by The Chromatics plays in the background of the heist in the opening sequence like a heartbeat that comes and goes. Whenever Driver hits the gas pedal the beat grows louder and when he stops the car the beat fades.

You’re meant to scrutinize characters in Drive, particularly their actions and surroundings. There’s enough breadth to the images we see we’re encouraged to ponder what each action means. Take the scene where one character returns home with a straight razor. We see him wash the blood off it with ordinary dish detergent. Then he takes it back to an ornate case with a velvet-like interior. The case is filled with other blades that are elaborately inscribed. He places the straight razor in in the empty space and spends few a moments delicately positioning it before gently closing the case. There’s a lot of information there, a lot we could debate. Like: Why wash something so precious with dish soap? I think it says the character likes to get jobs done without caring how, but could easily make five more interpretations.

Other questions arise from stories. At one point Driver makes a reference to the legend of The Scorpion and the Frog. The legend goes:

Once a scorpion needed to cross a stream. He asked a frog to take him across on his back. The frog said, “How do I know you won’t sting me?” The scorpion said he wouldn’t do such a thing. So the frog agreed to carry him across the stream.

Halfway across the frog felt a burning pain in his back. The scorpion had stung him. As he succumbed to the poison and he and the scorpion began to sink the frog cried out, “Why did you do that? Now we will both perish.”

The scorpion said, “I did it because it’s my nature.”

Driver’s nature is almost deceptive. He’s quiet most of the time, but other times astonishingly violent. There’s one scene though when Driver is watching cartoons with Irene’s son Benicio. Driver asks Benicio, “is that a bad guy?” Benicio says yes. “How can you tell?” Benicio says, “He’s a shark, does he look like a good guy to you?” Driver’s silver jacket has an incriminating gold scorpion adorned on its back. Through the first half of film we often see glimpses of it. Later, after Driver assaults a man we see the back of his jacket rise and fall as though the scorpion itself were breathing.

It’s the kind of role that serves the steely-gazed Ryan Gosling. Sometimes I wonder if he acts with his body first and expression second. It’s not easy to imply you’re withholding raw power beneath stillness and it’s crucial when your character isn’t saying much. This is one of those rare iceberg performances: The majority of the work happens beneath what you’re paying attention to.

Not since I was kid have admired a movie so much I wanted to inhabit it. When I get in my car I sometimes put on the soundtrack roll down the window and sing Riz Ortolani’s Oh My Love as loud as I can – off key. I practice turning the wheel with just the face of my palm. And when I’m in a rush I put on The Chromatics Tick of the Clock, get in my car, and drive.