 |
So it was déja vu all over again with the über-talented Gosling starring in Drive, a noiresque film that one is tempted to call stylish and sleek ? buzzwords that critics like to use when the work in question is actually empty and soulless. ...
Ryan Gosling arrives at the Toronto Film Festival premiere of "Drive"What is it about actor Ryan Gosling's face that makes directors want to linger on it so long you could duck out of the theater and order chicken cacciatore without missing anything vital? I actually walked out of Gosling's turn in Lars and the Real Girl after fifteen minutes, thinking: I've just been introduced to this character ? why am I being subjected to interminable, extreme close-ups of his mug when I don't even know who he is yet? Can't we advance the story along a tad and count the hairs in his eyebrows later?
So it was déja vu all over again with the über-talented Gosling starring in Drive, a noiresque film that one is tempted to call stylish and sleek ? buzzwords that critics like to use when the work in question is actually empty and soulless. At dead center is another brooding cipher with an enigmatic smile, known simply as Driver ? Ryan Gosling as a new millennium Gary Cooper, the man of so few words you wonder if he's possibly autistic. Or maybe just forgot his lines!
Now it could very well be that director Nicolas Winding Refn asked Gosling and his co-lead Carey Mulligan to count to five before speaking to one another, but for my ten bucks, what they actually had to say wasn't generally worth the wait. They are neighbors in a downscale L.A. apartment building ? she's raising a kid alone while hubby finishes up a prison sentence. Gosling works on cars and stunt-drives by day, then moonlights as a talented wheel-man for small-time heists. Gosling takes to her lad, but the incipient romance between the adults stalls when Mulligan's mate gets sprung from the joint early.
That's when the actual flashes of fun occur in Drive, when the tough-guy felon takes us into his brutish world, and Gosling ? out of loyalty to mom and the kid ? offers to help him out of a jam by being his getaway man in a pawnshop robbery about to go mortally wrong. Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman revel in their roles as Hollywood bad guys, and believe you me, don't inject long pauses before spitting out their hard-boiled, wiseguy dialogue. Their scenes play like minor-league Scorsese, but at least have a little snap, crackle and pop (or ? if you will ? stabbings, slashings and gunfire).
Along the way, the big reveal is that soft-spoken (when he actually deigns to speak) Driver can stomp skulls with the best of them when suitably provoked, and does so with a kind of psychopathic gleam in his eye. Without benefit of backstory, it's incumbent upon us to imagine what twisted chapter in his youth led him to become so coldly and effectively homicidal. How does one reconcile his touchy-feely, kid-loving persona with his inner Ted Bundy? Alas, such questions rarely get answered in sleek and stylish thrillers like these. They are all surface, with more surface lurking just under the veneer. All hat and very little cattle.
My unsolicited advice to the estimable Mr. Refn (director of the cult hit, Pusher): Don't be afraid to let your main characters express themselves verbally. If there would have been one more pregnant pause in Drive, the multiplex would have turned into an obstetrics ward. Breaking news ? the talkies are here to stay! Let the word go forth....
You might like: Paid DistributionEconomist Who Predicted the 2008 Crash Gives Chilling 2012 Forecast. See the Evidence. (Newsmax.com) Paid DistributionThe Ten Worst Movies Ever Made (Divine Caroline) Rachael Ray Dunkin' Donuts Ad Pulled from the Air (Play Goes Strong) Ask The Friendship Doctor: Finding Friends after Divorce (Play Goes Strong) QUIZ: ?Live from New York, it?s Saturday Night!? (Play Goes Strong) QUIZ: ?Live from New York, it?s Saturday Night!? (Play Goes Strong) Ask The Friendship Doctor: Finding Friends after Divorce (Play Goes Strong) Rachael Ray Dunkin' Donuts Ad Pulled from the Air (Play Goes Strong) The Ten Worst Movies Ever Made (Divine Caroline) Economist Who Predicted the 2008 Crash Gives Chilling 2012 Forecast. See the Evidence. (Newsmax.com)