Drive

I recently watched Drive, a movie that I have heard nothing but positive things about. The main character is played by Ryan Gosling, he is known for playing the male lead in romantic movies such as The Notebook and Blue Valentine. In Drive, his character, which is never named and is credited as “The Driver”, does not have much dialogue but instead shows emotion in his movements and facial expressions. His emotions are usually only shown when he starts to become involved with Irene, his love interest in the film played by Carey Mulligan. Even then he continues to show his emotion only by smiling and brief dialogue. Irene has a son named Benicio and the driver does a great job at being a father figure for this child. Though this movie has an emotional aspect it does also have some very violent scenes. The violence is very graphic and gory but is not a main aspect of the film. The main part is the relationship the driver gains with Irene and her son and what he would do to protect them.

The director seemed to change the overused car chase film into a film that has car chases but is in fact not a car chase movie. Drive has emotion and feeling that other action movies just don’t have. This is not a Fast and the Furious type car movie. An example of this is how the director utilized an unorthodox soundtrack for a movie like this. Unlike other action movies from today, it uses a very 80’s electronic style score with some songs containing female lead vocals. It makes Drive very unique compared to other recent movies and it is quick to utilize this soundtrack right from the beginning of the movie in the opening credits. What also makes this action movie is the pace and editing. The pace of the movie is very slow which I can imagine will turn off fans of action movies, which usually have fast editing of scenes to make the pace faster. Instead this movie uses slow editing that draws out scenes longer so the viewer can feel the scenes instead of just quick glances of images on the screen. However, some fast editing is used during the few chase scenes in the film.

Overall I found this movie to be refreshing compared to other movies that have come out lately. The acting was amazing from every actor in the film but Ryan Gosling's performance steals the movie. I loved it from beginning to end and it was the first film in a while that I wanting to see again after it ended. If anything watch it for the amazing score and soundtrack.