Drive Movie Review: This movie isn't kidding.

Drive is one of those movies that I really thought I wouldn't like, or it would just be okay at best. I was prepared to immediately write it off as a stupid action movie with some neat car stunts here and there. In fact, I immediately thought of The Rock's action movie Faster, which also is also in the One Word Title Club. Drive is actually a very special movie, and the rest of this review will tell you exactly why.

The deck was very much stacked against my liking this movie because I was prepared to hate the driving forces behind it. Before the movie, I didn't particularly like Ryan Gosling. I'm not really sure why, I just didn't. Also, I'm not a huge fan of the director, Nicolas Winding Refn. Starting the movie, I cringed when I saw that name and recognized it as the person who was behind the movie Valhalla Rising. The movie also features Ron Pearlman, who often does terrible movies and has the large face of a modern day caveman. It was very easy to almost quit at the very beginning (I watched the move on Netflix's streaming service) but I'm glad I didn't.

One of the reasons that I did not quit the movie is because it is so special and charming. Drive is full of things that could be so ridiculously cheesy, but they aren't. From the outset, you will notice heavy touches of the 80's. Although I believe all the movie's songs are from the past few years, the soundtrack is very, very 80's. The font that's used to provide the title and credits is straight from the 80's. When I started the movie up, I immediately thought of Valley Girl and To Live and Die in L.A. Ryan Gosling's ridiculous scorpion jacket (which you will find incredibly cool by the end of the movie) is also very 80's. I know that there are other recent movies that have also had an 80's theme or have taken place in the 80's, but this movie isn't kidding.

This plot of this movie is basic and cliched. Ryan Gosling is a stuntman/getaway driver who wants to help his next door neighbor, a nice lady with a criminal husband just released from jail. I don't want to give many spoilers, but there isn't much more to the plot. You aren't going to be guessing until the very end to figure out what's happened because there's nothing to figure out. There's a love story, as you would expect, and there's a lot of Ryan Gosling staring lovingly into the eyes of his female costar without much dialogue. Ryan Gosling's "mentor" is a flawed man who at one point had driving skills but he has missed his opportunity at greatness. All of these things sound so silly, but they are executed so well that this movie does not feel like a joke; Drive is paying homage to many movies that have come before it, and it makes all the cheesy things cool again. 

Throughout this review, I'm constantly referring to Ryan's Gosling's character specifically as "Ryan Gosling's character" because the character has no name. Maybe he's known as "The Driver?" The Driver is good at driving and kicking ass, that's all. He spouts out these aggressive, frightening lines that make his toughness clear, and they are something that you'd expect to come out of a young Bruce Willis' mouth, but you actually believe Ryan Gosling, and he is scary. By the end of the movie, you'll see how scary he can be. The Driver is not a complex character, but the movie deliberately paces itself in a way such that you see The Driver's nature little by little and you get a full picture by the end. The metaphor of the The Driver being the scorpion can probably be interpreted in so many ways, but I like to think of the scene in the elevator as being one where he "stings the frog" and just cannot escape his nature.

The action and violence in this movie are far from cliched. There aren't any action sequences where a villain takes a swing at the hero, and the hero ducks it and delivers a knockout punch. In this movie, the hero may attack someone who is vulnerable, and he isn't going to let them get back up again. The Driver is an unstoppable force throughout the movie, and his character makes me think of Javier Bardem's from No Country for Old Men or Viggo Mortenson from A History of Violence. The violence in this movie is graphic and intense. The car chasing and driving sequences in the movie are well-done, but they are so overshadowed by everything else that is done so right, they are not my favorite parts of the movie. That's right: this is a movie that is about a getaway driver/stuntman, and my favorite scenes have nothing to with the cars or driving itself.

Drive is one of the best movies that I've seen recently, and it is a shame that it isn't more popular because it deserves to have a following. Although I was planning to watch The Avengers on Saturday morning, when I randomly watched Drive on Friday night, I just couldn't follow through with The Avengers. This movie was just too good for me to follow it up by sitting in a theater for 2 1/2 hours with something inferior. I'm sure that I'll have a good old time with The Avengers, but I would have found myself constantly running it down in my head even though I know I would been comparing apples to oranges.

I give Drive a 9.5 out of 10. You should definitely watch it. I'm sure some people will disagree with me, but this is one of my favorite movies, and I will admit to being negatively judgmental towards it before I even started watching. I'm going to give some Ryan Gosling and Nicolas Winding Refn movies a chance in the future, and I'm sure I'll be watching this movie again.