Quick Thoughts On: DRIVE

NOTE: So I saw a few movies over the holidays that I didn't have a chance to post my reviews on because of busy holiday schedules, spending time with family, and limited access to internet.  Shame on me.  Since I'm sure you were waiting breathlessly for my opinion on these films, I'll be posting some "Quick Thoughts."  Not full-fledged reviews, just some brief (for me) notes on how I felt about the movies.  First up:  DRIVE.

*****

Every few years, there comes a film that truly enters the national conversation...that you just can't get on board with.  It happened to me in 2006 with CHILDREN OF MEN.  In 2011 it happened again for me with DRIVE.  That movie has been on (almost) literally every single Top 10 films-of-the-year lists I've read, and often in the #1 or 2 slots.  When I saw it last month, I couldn't have been more excited to see it.  Color me extremely disappointed.

I simply don't understand the unabashed love for this film.  While I didn't think it was abjectly terrible, neither did I think it was anything special.  Ryan Gosling was fine, but he was better in both other films he was in last year (THE IDES OF MARCH and, especially, CRAZY STUPID LOVE).  This film was trying so hard to be an arty, moody, atmospheric, stylized, violently "cool" indie flick -- and when I can see a film trying, it has ceased being successful.  It was as though director Nicholas Winding Refn had watched one too many indie films and tried desperately to emulate their appearance without actually studying their content.

DRIVE is full of shots of Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan staring at each other, out a window, or merely into empty space.  Their dialogue is filled with silences...that mean nothing.  It's as though Refn thinks the sign of romantic chemistry is plenty of pregnant pauses.  In a movie with good dialogue, a good director and good actors (DRIVE only has one of those three things), silences can be extremely effective, but they should always be an outward symptom of something coming organically from the character -- in DRIVE, the silences are there for their own sake, to construct "mood."  Harold Pinter, the playwright who was notorious for his use of "pauses" and "silences" in his scripts, has been quoted as saying: "I've really been extremely depressed when I've seen productions in which a silence happens because it says silence [...] and it's totally artificial and meaningless."  That is exactly what's happening in DRIVE.

There are some cool parts -- the opening sequence, in particular, is breathtaking.  Christina Hendricks (MAD MEN) is entertaining as a two-bit floozy.  Albert Brooks is magnetic as the unexpectedly violent Bernie (I kept closing my eyes and imagining Marlin from FINDING NEMO uttering those vicious threats...the most entertaining part of the movie, for me).  Bryan Cranston is as great as he ever is.  Again, the actors are not the problem.  I just couldn't get on board with the director's decision to sacrifice believable, three-dimensional characters and stimulating dialogue in favor of artificial atmosphere.  This is by no means a seamless film -- it is very crudely stitched together from other, greater films.  (Even the movie's tagline, There Are No Clean Getaways, is stolen word-for-word from NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN.)

Rating:
** Eh. I guess it could've been worse.
In one of the few "Rotten" reviews for the film on RottenTomatoes, William Kostakis from MovieFIX sums it up best in one sentence: "What DRIVE is trying to do is very clear, but clear intent doesn't forgive a film that's mostly flat."  Spot on.

*****

Okay, so that ended up being longer than I meant it to be, but it's still shorter than most of my reviews.

Alright, Fellow Addicts.  I know I'm in a tiny, tiny minority here, so let the flaming begin.  Vote in the poll below and then hit the comments!

What did you think of DRIVE?