…so original that if the 80s didn’t exist they just came up with it.
I was giggling already when the bright pink credits of the opening sequence made me think, “So cheesy”. That wouldn’t be the last time I’d think that, but Drive is still a very good film.
Hopscotching along “art” and “entertainment”, it’s something of a film noir (great use of light/shadows). It’s got electro pop and little dialog (enter the multiplex punters complaining that it’s slow). The way the narrative goes is predictable, but that’s not what interested me. It’s the building up of a mood which is so great in Drive. 
This is sort of an action film, but it’s not. There’s a heist or two, there’s a little love story, there are several conflicts… but the faces, the colours, the light, the unlight. That’s where the action is. And I loved it.
The main character’s like a warrior Buddhist monk (they did in fact exist), also reminiscent of Melville’s Le Samourai. The Driver is cool and collected, until he’s not. Then he’s just cool yet uncollected, smashing up heads until they hit a tone of sangria. The lady-friend is more of a prop to unleash a pathological kind of love in the Driver. I detect no major character composition there.
The music and atmosphere are insanely Lynchian; that is, dreamy-disturbing. It’s these two components that make me think highly of the film. The violent scenes were… well, cheesy. Though one was definitely Lynchian.
And conveniently enough, one day after I see the film, an email pops up in my inbox. I can read French and images, so now you should listen to la “B.O. deja legendaire”
ici (soundcloud)
The music, as I already mentioned, includes something I rarely indulge in, going by the name electro-pop. In Drive it just works, in the dramatically cheesiest way ever. So Kavinsky’s Nightcall, yes, I bop along to you. It’s probably something to do with how the film came about, with the protagonist’s soul being saved by pop music and driving and all.
I can buy that.
