Drive (2011)

Drive arrived in 2011 with the kind of quiet confidence that tends to divide audiences right down the middle. Based on James Sallis's 2005 novel of the same name, the film follows a Hollywood stuntman and part-time mechanic (known only as the Driver) who hires himself out as a getaway driver for criminal jobs. When a favour for his neighbour's husband collapses into something far more dangerous, the Driver finds himself drawn into a world of violence he cannot simply reverse out of. The premise is lean, almost pared back to its bones, and that restraint is very much the point.

Nicolas Winding Refn brought the project to life under the FilmDistrict, Bold Films and Marc Platt Productions banner, and it marked something of a turning point in his career. Coming off Only God Forgives, Refn had already established himself as a filmmaker drawn to slow-burn tension and heavily stylised visuals, and Drive sits squarely within that sensibility. The pacing is deliberate, the colour palette cool and neon-tinged, and the violence, when it does arrive, lands with a jolt precisely because so much of the film is so quiet. It won Refn the Best Director prize at Cannes, which tells you something about how seriously the film was taken in certain circles, even if mainstream audiences were sometimes wrong-footed by how little conventional thriller machinery it actually deploys.

The casting is a particular strength. Ryan Gosling, who had already shown considerable range across a variety of films (including The Place Beyond the Pines and The Nice Guys), brings an almost unsettling stillness to the Driver. It is a performance built on what is withheld rather than expressed, and it either works for you entirely or leaves you cold. Carey Mulligan plays Irene with a warmth that provides the film's emotional anchor, while Oscar Isaac appears as her husband, bringing a nervous, coiled energy to what could have been a fairly functional role. Albert Brooks, cast sharply against type as a menacing producer-turned-criminal, gives the film one of its most talked-about performances, polished but unremarkable in the best possible sense, nothing showy, just quietly unsettling. Bryan Cranston, then still largely associated with television comedy, takes on the role of Shannon, Driver's manager and sometime protector, a performance that reminded a lot of people there was considerably more to him than Malcolm in the Middle.

When Ryan Gosling said "..." I felt that Honestly? I'm really not sure exactly why but I absolutely LOVED Drive. I think that intro segment is probably the greatest intro in cinema history. The script in Drive is really light but it's the cinematography that carries it along with that incredible Kavinsky soundtrack. Oscar Isaac is great here alongside Carey Mulligan. This is also arguably the film that relaunched Bryan Cranston's career after Malcolm in the Middle. DRIVE is flawless.

So yes, I find it difficult to argue with any of that. Drive is one of those films where the restraint in the script stops being a weakness the moment you surrender to what Refn is actually doing with the camera and the sound design. That Kavinsky soundtrack (Nightcall in particular) has become almost inseparable from the film itself at this point, which is either a sign of how well it works or how thoroughly it has lodged itself in the cultural memory, probably both. For a thriller that spends so much of its runtime in silence, it's a film that's stayed remarkably loud in my head.

Rating: ★★★★★  | Year: 2011  | Watched: 2025-04-06

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Trailer

▶ Watch the official trailer for Drive (2011) on YouTube

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