Review of Drive (2011)
Seen in 2022.
A nameless man with minimal dialogue lives at the wheel until he meets his cute neighbour, whose husband falls foul of the mob.
Pure Hollywood. Over the skeletion of a folktale about love and moral good versus evil, the Danish director in California pours on a thick sauce of Jean-Pierre Melville, “Scorpio Rising” (1963), music-video aesthetics, the longing languor of In the Mood for Love (2000) and the violence of Taxi Driver (1976). It’s set in the present and shot with digital cameras, but it’s still made to look like a nostalgic dream about the 1980s. The result inspired Hotline Miami (2012), which is even more extreme, and the fan-made “Ruski Roadtrip” music video, which uses the song “Nightcall” like Drive.
It’s at its most silly and sublime in the elevator scene, where Refn does more with the lighting than the windowless cabin can possibly account for as the tragically separated lovers share their first kiss and “the Driver”, a superhero, kills someone new. Neither the hero, the woman nor the henchman seem entirely human. It’s simple in concept, but it takes passion to do it this well. It feels like the climax of Cinema Paradiso (1988), like the stuff popular songs and popular movies were always made of.