Drive

Indie, Violent Drama
3.5 stars
Good, but really slow with lots of long silences – and has a terrible soundtrack. Ryan Gosling stars as a nameless character whose past remains a mystery. He works as both a stunt driver and as a getaway driver for bad guys. His loner routine is interrupted when he falls for and begins helping out his neighbor, Carey Mulligan (An Education, Wall Street) whose husband (Oscar Isaac, Robin Hood 2010) is mixed up with some seriously bad dudes. As I said, this film really takes it’s time and depends more on facial expressions rather than the spoken word to convey emotions. By contrast, the violent scenes are very gory. Costars include Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman (Hellboy) as mean thugs as well as Bryan Cranston (Malcolm in the Middle) as Gosling’s crooked employer. Let me put it this way, if you didn’t like 2010’s superb (but also slow and silent) George Clooney film The American, you probably won’t like this one either. Good, but gory and really slow.