The Performances
Ryan Gosling is amazing, and that’s coming from someone who hasn’t been especially fond of his work up to this point. Gosling’s facial expressions tend to suggest that there’s a lot he’s thinking but not saying. At times it can seem as though he’s smirking at some inside joke. All of this works in his favor in this film (for reasons we’ll get into momentarily).
Though a bit more animated, Carey Mulligan’s performance is successful in the same way. Her wary doe eyes convey so much about her character–she is wounded but not broken. Bryan Cranston’s turn as a slightly sleazy paternal figure makes me wish he did more feature work. Albert Brooks, playing a former movie producer turned gangster, steals every scene he appears in. The cast is not a sprawling ensemble, but all the players are very strong and bring something unique to the table.
The Writing
The screenplay was written by Hossein Amini and based on James Sallis’ book (also titled Drive). Though Drive trades in noir/hard-boiled tropes, absent are the flourishes of colorful dialogue historically associated with the genre. What’s remarkable about the writing in Drive is its economy.
The dialogue in Drive is quite spare. The characters say more with a few words and their facial expressions than most characters say in an entire film. I don’t think it’s necessarily any closer to the way people actually talk than the other extreme (and faithfully mimicking real speech isn’t the aim of screenwriting anyway), but the stylization feels refreshing and compelling.
The plot could be written on the back of a matchbook, and the story elements are ones we’ve seen a million times before, but what’s key here is that it doesn’t feel that way. In the wrong hands, Drive might have been a lesser copy of every classic car/driving and/or heist film. Which brings me to…
The Direction
Nicholas Winding Refn translates Amini’s script with a strong directorial point-of-view that blends the familiar plot points and general seen-it-before-ness of the subject matter into the background so that his fresh take on the material is what pops in the foreground.
Refn has shown a propensity for directing long, quiet scenes punctuated by bursts of savage violence (see: his Pusher trilogy), and in Drive it’s clear that his ability to do this effectively has become even stronger, better honed. Refn also proves he has the chops to direct action sequences. There hasn’t been a car chase this good on the screen in years. Part of the credit for that should go to…
The Editing
Matthew Newman has worked with Nicholas Winding Refn on three films including Drive, and one hopes the relationship will continue because they make beautiful movie magic together. Drive‘s action sequences are so well edited they feel like a revelation. Are you sick of jarring, quick cut editing techniques that compensate for weak filmmaking by disorienting the viewer with an artificial sense of action and adrenaline? Yeah, we all are. You always know who is where and what’s happening during Drive‘s action sequences, and those sequences are exciting because they are coherent, tense because you know what you’re anticipating.
The Music
Sequenced synths. Ethereal voices. A handful of songs (mostly similar to this one) were selected for the soundtrack and truly become essential to the storytelling. Cliff Martinez’s score is somewhat in the same electronic vein, mostly synth based, airy at times and murky and foreboding when it needs to be; most importantly, it never gets in the way of the imagery it supports.