Review of Drive (2011) by Brandon W — 20 Feb 2016

Drive is directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, written by Hossein Amini, and it stars Ryan Gossling, Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, Ron Perliman, and Albert Brooks in a new-noir film that is about a Hollywood stunt performer that is going on his life, until he start making friends with Irene and works with Shannon in the car shop.

I first watched Drive when I was probably in my pre-teen, and I was excited to watch it after hearing positive buzz about it, and I remember that I liked it, but I was kind of bored with it and was disappointed that it didn't had a lot of car chases or action in it that I thought I was going to get from the trailers.

So when I got much older and saw that Drive was on DirecTV, I was curious to see if I have the same opinion as I did 5 years ago, especially when I heard Chris Stuckmann's review on it. Turns out, not only did I really dig this movie a lot, but I also realized that I was the wrong age for it after watching it for the first time and wasn't completely ready for it yet.

The cast are great in it, especially Ryan Gosling as he can be charming and nice, while also be very intimidating and threatening when getting to his bad side. The interplay that he has with Shannon or Irene is very genuine and interesting to hear the conversations that they have with each other thanks to a great script by Hossein Amini.

I like the characters in this movie, and I didn't realize that the movie didn't give out the main character's name because I was very invested to see where it was going that I forgot that it didn't even address it.

The car chase scenes are entertaining to watch, and so are the action scenes that are very stylish in the way that it was filmed by Nicolas Winding Refn. The score by Cliff Martinez is one of the most impressive aspects of the film as it's just so different from what I'm used to hearing in a lot of films these days that it just stands out on its own, and it just fits so well with this movie.

Drive is such an impressive film that I honestly hope that Nicolas Winding Refn's next film Only God Forgives changes my opinion too as I was even more bored on that film, and so when I come across it, I'll watch it again.