Drive

So glad to see Drive return to Netflix. I’m indifferent to Ryan Gosling movies, at least he’s not irritating like Justin Timberlake and I was impressed with in La La Land which keeps getting shit on by White Guilt. I was also sold on seeing it because of the supporting cast: Bryan Cranston, Ron Perlman and Albert Brooks. The latter was a surprise because he isn’t the funny man (his movies) nor the comic villain (he was spectacular in Out of Sight).

This came out nine years ago, therefore it’s well past the “no spoilers” rules.

Gosling is an unnamed part-time stunt driver, part-time mechanic and part-time getaway driver for bank robberies. The movie’s opening sequence demonstrating his talent evading the LAPD blows away Baby Driver and was reminiscent the jarring beginning to Strange Days in how it demonstrated SQUID tech. He’s also the strong, silent type but he has a good samaritan streak which leads to his involvement in the two plots which inevitably collide:

• He will be his (legit) employer’s driver for a stock car that a local gangster (Albert Brooks!) will finance.
• He agrees to be his ex-con neighbor’s wheelman for a heist which should end a debt accrued while the neighbor was in prison (protection probably).

The performances are excellent. Everything blows away Tarantino’s take on modern crime stories filled with is annoying “voice,” and things are less tidy than Elmore Leonard’s work. People die in horrific ways. No one can be trusted. Nobody gets everything they want beyond living, if they survive. Again, it was awesome to finally see Albert Brooks be someone you don’t screw with and he takes no crap.

If you’re a fan of Elmore Leonard, Carl Hiassen or James Ellroy, I highly recommend Drive. Oh yeah, another advantage of QT, much better music, not some recycled collection of oldies the industry wants to monetize to death. This was based upon a novel and the author wrote a sequel, I would like to see that get made.