Drive

Drive Poster

I cannot begin to explain how excited I was to see this film, the trailer was gripping, plus it had won awards at Cannes Film Festival. I was lucky to be able to view an American copy of the film as it has already been released in USA. The film stars Ryan Gosling as “Driver” and Carey Mulligan as “Irene”, and is basically about Ryan’s character who is a by day a stunt driver for Hollywood films and by night, a driver for people that want a getaway.

This film is literally all about the atmosphere, before you think you are going to see the new “Fast and the Furious”, make sure you think again, it’s about loving someone, it’s about sacrifice and it’s about the relationships between people.

Ryan Goslin probably says about 100 words throughout the whole film. He doesn’t have much dialogue; however he really makes the character stand out among characters of the same stereotype. Irene is the drivers love interest and you basically watch their relationship flourish until the story really kicks in, when the husband of Irene comes out of prison and moves back in with her and their child. Driver and Standard (Irene’s Husband) strike up a friendship as he realises that he has looked after Irene and his son.

The Finale of the film is all about Standard and Driver doing one final job to help Standard pay off a debt to someone important in jail which is connected to one of the characters that is close to the driver’s life. I won’t tell you who it is, because you should really watch the film and I don’t want to spoil it for you.

The one thing I will warn everyone about is that in the second half, when Driver decides to take revenge and clear up the mess that has been provided by certain characters in the story it gets extremely violent, the expression Ultra-Violent comes to mind. When I first saw people writing about it, I just thought that they must have been over reacting. They really weren’t over reacting. It makes the like of Human Centipede look like the teletubbies. Some people said it was over the top, I say its necessary because it’s about time that people start to realise you cannot hit someone over the head with a hammer and for them to continue on living. This shows the true portrayal of violence and I applaud the director for having the balls to do this, so well done!

The soundtrack is very good, with 80’s music blasted all over the presentation. It fits the film very well with the clothing, but with modern day cars you can tell that it is set in the present day. But it works completely, a very gutsy move that works.

Overall it is a good film, some will appreciate the artistic side of things concerning the film, others won’t fair to well with it (Like my fiancée). Definitely worth watching.