Oscar season has kicked off; well . . . it has in my head anyway. Normally, any film that takes home the Best Picture Oscar or even contends for the Best Picture Oscar is release in cinemas between now an Christmas, so I reckon I’m gonna have to start hitting up the cinema a bit more over the coming months. I’ve seemed to be slacking in my old age, but something tells me it’s not out of laziness. It’s just that nothing has tickled my fancy out there, nothing has come along in the last month that I am willing to part 8 euro for, in order to see. . . . . . Until now

Drive

First up, we have the film that took home the Best Director Award at Cannes, Nicolas Winding Refn’s ‘Drive’. When I originally saw the trailer, Ryan Gosling sitting in a car, waiting, a sweet, low, italo-beat playing to heighten the tension, one balaclavaed man sprints out of a warehouse and into the car, followed by another one and away Ryan goes. It was all looking very cool and it wasn’t your typical trailer, there was something there that grabbed you, I couldn’t wait. A couple of months later, the film is finally released in Dublin and I’m first in line to see it.



Ryan Gosling’s character is a driver, yes; he is a man with a car, a man that can pretty much do anything with a car. The scene in which I was familiar with already, the trailer scene, is the opening scene of the movie. This is obviously his night job; he is hired wheels for anyone who needs to get the fuck out of somewhere pronto. He doesn’t want to know about the job, he just wants to know where & when, he’ll be there. He gives you a five minute window in which to get your criminal activity done & dusted and out into his back seat, where he can guarantee you he will have you home safe & sound in your bed and away from any enforcers of the law. Cut to probably the slickest title sequence I’ve seen in a while – tune.

We then checkout Gosling’s character’s day job - he is a stunt man in Hollywood and a very highly rated one at that, he has his lovable boss, Shannon, who is played by Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston who thinks the world of him. Shannon wants to push the Gosling character, okay, I’m gonna stop calling him the Gosling character now, the character is not given a name in the film, its got that real Clint man with no name, loner kind of buzz off it. Anyway, Shannon (Bryan Cranston) wants to break into the motor racing game with . . . . . . . . . . Driver as his . . . driver but he needs cash to do it so he goes to Bernie Rose (Albert Brooks) and his friend, Nino (Ron Pearlman) for backing. This is really clever casting if you ask me. First off, Albert Brooks, probably one of the nicest, cuddly looking guys you’ll ever see, he is so unthreatening looking and is always comic relief in everything that he does, but not in this. This is a toughest Albert Brooks your ever gonna see, and as for Ron Pearlman, after Hell Boy, you gotta want to hug big Ron.

We then follow Driver home and we begin to see this very slow-moving relationship begin, well, I wouldn’t say relationship, more like a flirtation with one of his neighbours who is played by Carey Mulligan. She lives alone with her kid and is obviously in need of a hunky man like Ryan Gosling. The first meeting between the two characters is simply eye contact in the lift and progresses from there, but sadly, she is married and her husband is coming home from prison, shortly.

Its funny, this film is like two films, a film of two halves, as they might say. The first film is this slick, slow moving exploitation movie about this loner driver with no name living in LA who has this dark, edgy side to him. He meets this amazing girl that he slowly falls in love with, the music and costumes are quality and we have an angry husband coming back from prison to ruin it all. Sounds like a simple film narrative. Well, let me tell you, the whole film takes a sudden turn as soon as the husband comes home. All of a sudden, the plot starts speeding up like a motherfucker and you don’t know where you are. For some reason the Albert Brookes character and the Ron Pearlman character are connected to the husband of your one, and then the Bryan Cranston character get involved and the whole thing descends into manic violence. And I’m not talking about bang, bang, your dead kind of violence, I’m talking stab, stab, I’ll stove your head in, Reversible kind of violence. There I was, settling into this nicely paced romantic film with an edge to it and out of nowhere it was like I was sitting in one of Ryan Goslings race cars and he completely changed gear, not only changed gear but he hit the fucking nitro.

I cannot ignore that the script was choppy and all over the place, it seemed rushed and it was like they didn’t know how to end the film but, say that, Drive has got so many good elements to it as well. Ryan Gosling to begin with, I loved him in Blue Valentine & Half Nelson, and I loved him in this. We are talking about a seriously good actor here, his performance in each film I’ve been lucky to see him in has been completely unique. In Drive, he shows amazing control & screen presence, he goes down the road of lesser is better and it works. He has the cool, toothpick chewing rebel quality of James Dean mixed with the edgy, bordering on psychotic shyness of Travis Bickle, quality work from him. There is also something about Carey Mulligan that I adore as well, she is the type of girl you see yourself falling in love with, the type of girl you just want to protect and look after and also . . . . She’s extremely hot. Ron Pearlman, Bryan Cranston, Albert Brookes and also a brief couple of scenes with Joan from Mad Men were all good, but their characters never really had the time to develop into anything, as most of the film was dedicated to Gosling, Mulligan and their relationship.

Another character that is very prevalent in this film is the city of LA. As in the likes of Training Day and Heat, LA comes across nearly as a character in this film. Each scene is inter-cut with a mix beautiful over head shots of downtown Los Angeles or wide-angle shots of the beach front. Newton Thomas Siegel, was the director of photography on this, he did stuff like Usual Suspects & the X-Men movies and he needs to be applauded for how this film looks, it looks sweet as a nut.

But my favourite aspect of the film by far was the soundtrack, what a fucking soundtrack, essence of Miami Vice & To Live and Die in LA all over. As I am writing this piece, I am downloading it and I cannot wait to give it a listen after. The soundtrack is a combination of emotional synthy italo disco mixed with a load of moody ominous electro, it is slicker than you can imagine and Nicolas Winding Refn needs a round of applause for his choice. I noticed he had done it in Bronson, another film I thought lost its way half way through, but its soundtrack kicked ass.



All in all, I enjoyed Drive, it wasn’t the best film of the year by a long shot, there is an awful lot wrong with that second half but performances were good, ideas in the film were good and its soundtrack will definitely be featuring on the Made for Film podcast over the next couple of months