Drive - not what I was expecting

Despite a number of friends and reviews telling me otherwise, I still went into the cinema this Sunday assuming 'Drive' was going to be a car chase thriller. By all accounts a very well-made and polished car chase film, but still very much inside the Hollywood mainstream. How wrong I turned out to be. 'Drive' is more of an indie heist film in which the main character - un-named in the film, simply 'The Driver' on IMDB - is an enigmatic stunt driver with shadowy connections to LA's criminal underworld.

Ryan Gosling plays our mysterious lead, a stunt driver who sells his driving skills to anyone in the criminal underworld willing to pay him. He will turn up for a 5 minute window at a given time, and if you need a get away driver in that time then he's your man. He lives alone in a flat next to a woman (Irene - played by my current favourite actress Carey Mulligan) and her kid. When Irene's husband is released from jail and extorted by his former prison-mates, The Driver offers to help.

And that's when the film gets violent. When the violence happens, it's quick, to the point and extreme. With an 18 rating despite having no sex or drugs, it's not really a surprise. At no point does the director get his cameraman to linger on a gruesome shot, preferring instead to use quick flashes of horrific carnage. It's an effective technique that had me wondering "Did I really just see that..." as the action moved on. Much better than the mindless bloodletting you get in the average horror flick these days, and easily enough to warrant the 18 rating.

It is not only the violence that's well-handled. The whole film has a good pace and manages to get through a lot of ideas in 100 minutes. To describe Reynolds' character as enigmatic is to understate his behaviour. The whole plot is shrouded with a noirish 80s styling that gives it a dreamlike quality. I wasn't really a fan of the 80s electronic music or the GTA Vice City-like bright pink italicised writing, but I assume someone thinks the 1980s are cool again. Much better was the slow burn of a story that feels well-layered despite being reasonably short by modern standards.

When I first came out of the cinema I wasn't sure what I thought as I'd been expecting something utterly different. Then just like the slow and satisfying burn of the film's plot, I felt a slow and satisfying aftertaste as I digested what I'd seen. A pleasant surprise of a film.