Drive

Don’t let the guy from The Notebook fool you. Drive is no pretty-boy follow up to Crazy, Stupid, Love. It’s full of bloody violence, shady dealings, and cars, but with enough focus on Ryan Gosling to keep the girlfriend interested. He’s a man of few words, a man with no name, whose identity hinges on doing what he does best: drive.

Ryan Gosling chose Nicolas Winding Refn as the director to replace Neil Marshall, and this after Gosling had stepped in to replace Hugh Jackman as the lead. Significant difference there - quite possibly for the better. It’s easier to see a young Gosling getting tangled up in disaster than a world-weary Jackman falling prey to so much ruin. There are, however, two different films here. Before the heist-gone-wrong, and after. The fallout from our hero’s misadventure brings a dramatic change in color scheme and energy... namely, violent energy.

The movie as a whole maintains an unmistakably retro feel. The opening titles are absolutely out of the late eighties/early nineties. Then there’s the cars (1973 Chevy Malibu), the costumes (although ‘white trash’ hasn’t changed in the last 30 years, really), and the dialogue (film noir/mafia movie). If it wasn’t for the cell phones, I would have thought the film was set much earlier than the present. The atmosphere is perfect - the lighting and cinematography seems, somehow, to be just right. Now and again, we encounter a touch of the unexpected - and three days after seeing the film, I’m still weighing its effectiveness. This includes Carey Mulligan as Irene - whom I have always thought resembles Michelle Williams, Gosling’s Blue Valentine costar. Mulligan is bewitching, of course, if somehow out of place. It’s clear that the costumes are meant to convince us that Mulligan is as lower-class as the script would have us believe. (I’m also not sure how I feel about her casting as Daisy Buchanan in Baz Luhrman’s forthcoming Gatsby picture... we’ll see.)

It’s not what I expected, from the trailer. As my movie-going friend pointed out, I expected more driving, more chases. Less blood. On the upside, someone did something right: girlfriends will want to see Gosling, and boyfriends will enjoy the cars, adrenaline, and violence. Something for everyone.