All Drived Up

This movie Drive came out eons (months) ago. Perhaps you seent it already or you don't care for car chase movies so it never made it on to your radar. The reason I'm reviewing it so many moons later is because 1. I only just recently saw it, 2. I've had a resurgent obsession with Ryan Gosling. Did you know his parents are Mormons? Fascinating.

The following is sure to have already been used to describe Drive: noir, slick, deliberate, cool, somber, violent, gangster. Agreed.

Here's the deal... Do you like your protagonists quiet and aloof in tight pants and old man shoes? What about soundtracks that make you want to do the good white stuff off a Donna Summer 12" while Giorgio Moroder blares in the background? 80's Hong Kong cinema? Well, go on then!

One of my favorite things about this film other than Gosling's snug jeans is the character played by Los Angeles... isolated, moody, earnest, dank, vast - a part she rarely gets to play in the movies anymore. It seems as if the entire film was shot at twilight, when the smog and sun have settled into one hazy hue. In addition to the fine job done by the City of Angels, Drive is full of excellent performances, especially by an unexpectedly cast Albert Brooks as the bad guy's bad guy. The driving in Drive is well-paced and intentional. Even the violence works as an independent apparatus moving the story along nicely.

All I really gotta say is, if my car mechanic looked like Ryan Gosling I would be pulling out wires from behind the dash on a regular basis, showing up at the shop with half-deflated tires asking him to check the fluids under my hood every coupla weeks. Ahem.