Review of FU - Drive

Having talked about a very underrated movie with Ryan Gosling for my first recommendation, I’m going to talk about a very overrated movie with Ryan Gosling for my first non-recommendation. I present to you, one of the most pretentious films I have ever watched, Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive.

So the movie, based on the book of the same name, is about a guy named the Driver (no other name), who is a movie stuntman who moonlights as a getaway driver for hire. He lives alone, and works at a garage run by Bryan Cranston, while a single mother and her son move into the apartment next to his. Brutal violence, gangsters, strip clubs and some driving follow, with some cool visuals and a lot of name actors. Sounds cool?

Well, they somehow eternally screwed up this premise with some of the most truly idiotic directing choices I’ve ever seen. From heavy-handed symbolism to poor character direction to ridiculously over-the-top violence that wouldn’t be out of place in the new Doom games, Nicolas Winding Refn proves he is a director you should never call again.

Think this looks cool? Prepare to see shots like these for 2 hours. You're welcome.

Of the many faults I have with this movie, I’ll start with the cast. I have probably not seen a movie as wasteful of its cast as Drive is. Ryan Gosling’s character is given barely any dialogue and is directed to smoulder silently while wearing a cool jacket, betraying both his charisma as an actor (which really could have been used here) or his emotional range. He’s clearly supposed to be a cool, Clint Eastwood type character, but Gosling is unable to convey any of the grit or the charisma of Dirty Harry or the Man with No Name. He’s just a guy wearing a jacket with a scorpion on it.

The husk of a car is this movie. Ryan Gosling is me. This is both a metaphor and a weird fantasy.

Meanwhile, Academy Award-nominee Carey Mulligan as his girl next door is given a more complex role, but isn’t given anything to do beyond mope. Bryan Cranston gets 10 minutes of screen time, Ron Perlman gets about 8, Christina Hendricks gets 6, and Oscar Isaac gets less than 5 before all four of their characters are murdered. Albert Brooks as Bernie Rose, the film’s villain, is the only one used to his full potential, and his character is honestly really intriguing and dark. But instead of a movie about him, we get this.

Albert Brooks, aka the one thing about this movie that I actually like.

Another thing I dislike about this movie is the action. Now, this is a true story, a woman actually sued the producers of Drive because the movie featured “unsatisfactory amounts of driving”. I can’t make this stuff up. Here's a link https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/drive-filmdistrict-lawsuit-ryan-gosling-245871

In terms of that statement, there’s plenty of driving in Drive, but it’s really boring. The first heist at the start is interesting, but beyond that, Refn keeps using the same camera angles, the same electronic soundtrack and the same everything. None of the action scenes have real catharsis or feeling, but not in a You Were Never Really Here-style lack of catharsis, where it was to represent Joaquin Phoenix’s tired mental state over his life of killing. It’s just poorly directed.

Add some ridiculously brutal violence, such as exploding heads, curb-stomping and force-fed bullets, and you have action scenes which are either disgusting, uninteresting, or failing to immerse.

Perhaps the worst part, and the one I find the funniest, is how heavy-handed the allegory of the movie is. It’s meant to be a sort of modern take on The Scorpion and the Toad, which we understand from the movie’s one good scene, where Gosling realises he can’t abandon his life of violence, and so brutally kills someone in front of Mulligan.

Then Bryan Cranston tells the story of the Scorpion and the Toad to the Driver. OK…Bit excessive but alright. Then followed by many long lingering shots of the scorpion design on the back of Gosling’s jacket, like an ad interrupting a YouTube video every five minutes. I found this awful filmmaking…but hilarious, nonetheless.

Somehow, the movie made me hate this frickin' awesome jacket. That is unforgivable.

Why do critics love this? I find a lot of critic’s reviews calling the movie “arthouse action” and praising it for doing something different. Screw that noise. Merely because something does something differently doesn’t mean it’s good. Just look at Ang Lee’s Hulk. Rather than be the smash-fest it was going to be, it was instead a mixture of Terence Malick and King Kong. And it was terrible, and critics savaged it for that. So why didn’t it happen to Drive?

Another point of praise I found was the many homages to action films of the past, reminding critics of Dog Day Afternoon, Dirty Harry and all those exploitation films of the 1960’s. In the same way, you could argue that Epic Movie is on the same level as Drive, as that had many homages to “epic” movies of the past, none of which gave any real quality to the film whatsoever.

This movie is on the same level as Drive in terms of movie homages. Shuddering is a natural response, as is screaming in rage and/or fear.

Overall, Drive’s passionate fanbase really confuses me. I hate this film, but it’s nowhere near the worst film I’ve seen.

Oh, boy.

Please leave suggestions on what I should talk about. Give me topics so that I can release a double review feature on films about those topics. For example, if you gave me the topic “Films directed by women”, I would do a review of recommendation for Selma and a review of non-recommendation for A Wrinkle in Time. I would be really interested in hearing what you have to say and what topics I can do.