The Drive (2025)
I always try to go into a film as blind as I can, no synopsis, no comments, nothing, and with The Drive that paid off beautifully. David Arrow's short is a quietly gripping little period piece, and I came away pleasantly surprised and rather moved. Three and a half stars.
It is set on a warm November day in the early 1960s, and from the very first frame the attention to detail is superb. The period is conjured with real care, and I was especially taken with the gorgeous cars of the era, which the film lingers on lovingly; the whole thing looks and feels authentically of its time, an impressive feat for a short.
At its centre is Liz (Amber Paul), out on her weekly school carpool, collecting a car full of children, a couple of whom, I gathered, are heading off for a sleepover. It is the most ordinary of errands, the kind of small domestic routine that fills a life. Then a fragment of news crackles over the car radio, something about shots fired, and a certain Jackie taking cover, and the ground shifts beneath the whole film.
To say much more would be to spoil it, and this is very much a film to experience cold, as I did. I will only say that what I assumed would be a familiar "you always remember where you were when you heard" piece turns out to have a far more personal and surprising dimension, and the way that revelation unfolds, the suspense and the tension Arrow wrings from it, is beautifully handled. I could feel it tightening with every mile.
Amber Paul anchors it all with a lovely, understated performance, holding the mounting dread and tenderness in her face as much as in anything she says. Three and a half stars. The Drive is a really good short, elegant, controlled and genuinely affecting, that takes a footnote to one of the twentieth century's darkest days and finds something intimate and human inside it. Seek it out, and if you can, go in knowing as little as I did.
Related on Movies With Macca
More from United States: Hot Water (2026)
More from the 1960s: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), High and Low (1963)
More drama: I Will Be Alright (2026), White Musk (2026), FarEye (2026)
