Blu-ray Review: ‘Drive’ directed by Nicolas Winding Refn

It’s night in Los Angeles. A lone man is standing in a dark apartment, staring at the window while the Clippers game is on television. He’s on the phone with someone, giving his terms of agreement. He drives up to a warehouse and waits before two men come out running. The man, who the audience will learn to simply call “the Driver,” drives them away, expertly evading cops. This opening sequence is the only time in Drive, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, that we see the Driver at his best. From now on, elements of the film’s plot - what little there is - will force him to bend his set of moral rules. He will stop anyone who stands in the way of the safety of his new love, his neighbor Irene, even if it means he has to kill.

Drive is all about style over substance. If Winding Refn and screenwriter Hossein Amini drew up a convoluted plot out of James Salis’ novel, it would only get in the way of Winding Refn’s radical vision of what L.A. would be like if the 1980s were still here. Based on the interview included on the Blu-ray disc, Winding Refn is competing with the perfect heist in Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Cercle Rouge (1970), the perfect car chase in Peter Yates’ Bullitt (1968) and the obsessive love in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) instead of the constant explosions of many of today’s action films. Winding Refn’s style permeates throughout every aspect of the film, from the acting to the music.

Every actor in this film is fantastic, starting with Ryan Gosling. Between his performance in The Ides of March and this, it’s truly amazing that he was not nominated for an Oscar. He oozes cool in this film like the stars of Winding Refn’s influences. Carey Mulligan is lovely as Irene and is able to use her skills to show how easily these two fall in love without words. Another key to the Drive puzzle is the amazing Albert Brooks, playing against type as the powerful gangster that Driver goes head-to-head with. At the very least, he was robbed of a supporting actor nomination. Ron Perlman as Brooks’ partner, Oscar Isaac as Irene’s wife, Christina Hendricks as one of the participants of the heist and Bryan Cranston as Driver’s mentor fill out other brilliant supporting parts.

It is also necessary to point out Cliff Martinez’s pulsing ‘80s-inspired music. The film’s unique soundtrack, combined with the brilliant use of pop songs, adds to the feeling that this film is of another time. Unbelievably, the film’s only Oscar nomination came for its sound design, which is fantastic, but there are other aspects of this film that are just as great. Winding Refn actually won the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival, beating out the Oscar favorite, The Artist’s Michel Hazanavicius.

Drive was released on Blu-ray last Tuesday. The film’s picture and sound is presented perfectly by Sony, but the features are a little light. A 25-minute interview with Winding Refn supplies the most information about the beginnings of the film, while four or five to 15-minute vignettes discuss various aspects of the film. It’s disappointing that there are no interviews with Gosling and I think that some of the actors (particularly Mulligan) go a little too far in trying to explain what the film means.

Winding Refn’s Drive is simply unlike anything else that has hit theaters in the past year. The Blu-ray of this stunning film is a great presentation of it. Drive itself is not for everyone, especially people like the Michigan woman who wanted it to be like Fast and Furious. The film is all about style and atmosphere more than its paper-thin plot and if you buy into a film like that, you’ll love Drive.