Scene City #8: Drive (Winding Refn, 2011)

He’s sometimes working at a garage, sometimes doing stunts for the movies and other times helping some dangerous folks but he’s mostly driving through the streets of LA. “Drive” is an existential action picture, one that goes through the motions of most genre films (dealing with the usual assortment of mafia stereotypes) but also one that sidesteps them by giving its hero a sense of cool detachment.

“Drive” is a cool movie, plain and simple. It has an electrifying soundtrack (by composer Cliff Martinez and featuring the catchy song “A Real Hero”), great performances (the most notable by Albert Brooks, playing his first role as a villain) and a bolstering directing style from Nicolas Winding Refn (one of the most exciting of European filmmakers, see “Bronson” and “Valhalla Rising”). In “Drive” his camera focuses intently on Ryan Gosling, playing a man of few words and controlled emotions but who’s capable of inflicting terrible acts of violence.

The driver (he isn’t given a name) lives in a lonely apartment next to a woman (played by Carey Mulligan) whose husband is in prison. He befriends her and her son and soon enough is entangled in a plot to help her husband once he arrives. But the details are almost collateral pleasures next to the sheer act of watching a movie of such marvelous control of tone. Once it’s over we kind of forget of the conventional plot points and remember specific scenes, like the driver’s first date, the explosive violence on an elevator and a sequence where he wears a stunt mask to stalk a mobster. Those moments burn in the memory and make the film into a sort of urban dreamscape of daring imagination.

“Drive” is one of the best movies of the year. It’s exciting and original and drenched in atmosphere rewarding multiple viewings.