2 Time Film Excess Award Winner:
Best Sound
Best Score: Cliff Martinez
2 Time Film Excess Nominee:
Best Sound (won)
Best Score: Cliff Martinez (won)
+ Best Car Movie of the Year
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| Ryan Gosling looking spiff on the poster for Nicholas Winding Refn's Drive |
Ryan Gosling (The Place Beyond the Pines (2012)) empathetically embodies the nameless driver, who is a stunt driver in the day and chauffeurs thugs at night, and who gets involved with an ugly story as his beautiful neighbor and her son get threatened by some people her out-from-jail husband owes money.
Danish master filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn's (Pusher II (2004)) Drive is an adaptation of James Sallis' (Moth (1993)) 2005 novel of the same name by Iranian screenwriter Hossein Amini (47 Ronin (2013)). It is a supremely stylish, coolly subdued and yet very hard-hitting car movie/crime-thriller romance.
The film has a cool sound side, brutal effects and juicy characters played by an exciting cast: Ron Perlman (Skin Trade (2014)) as a Jewish gangster, and Albert Brooks (I Love You, Daddy (2017)) as his reluctant partner are great, and Oscar Isaac (Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)) and Christina Hendricks (Bad Santa 2 (2016)) also give very good performances in smaller parts. It can be quarry figuring out what Drive says (if anything) under its radiantly cool splendor: It is essentially about loss of innocence, I think, which is smushed away by an ugly, criminal world, and this is why Carey Mulligan (Never Let Me Go (2010)) plays the one character who sticks out in it. - Everyone else is - or is getting - mired in the filth already.
The film's celebrated synth-heavy, pop-electro score by Cliff Martinez (Spring Breakers (2012)) is an integrated part of the film's attractive, pulpy package: Drive often looks and sounds like that an adaptation of the popular console game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002) might be like, stylistically paying tribute to the 1980s with a story that might as well take place in that decade, (it is quite universal really.)
For Refn, Drive is a recognizable continuation of his oevre about the knotty, violent-prone young man. It is also his international break-through, biggest triumph and most popular film to date, although it doesn't top three of his films in my book: Pusher II (2004), Valhalla Rising (2009) and Only God Forgives (2013).
Related posts:
Nicolas Winding Refn: 2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
Only God Forgives (2013) - Violent beauty in Bangkok
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2011 in films - according to Film Excess
Bronson (2008) or, Violent Man
Bleeder (1999) - Refn's mysterious second film
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| Carey Mulligan and Ryan Gosling in probably the year's best movie kiss in Nicholas Winding Refn's Drive |
Watch the great trailer for the movie here
Cost: 15 mil. $
Box office: 76.2 mil.$
= Big hit
[Refn won the Best Director award at Cannes, where Drive begun its very strong French reception that totaled 13.2 mil. $ (17 % of the total gross). It opened #2 in the US, where it racked in 35 mil. $ (46 % of the total gross).]
What do you think of Drive?
What is/are Refn's best film/s in your opinion?
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