When the font used for a movie’s opening credits makes you smile with recognition, it’s probably a road sign that the film is paying homage to something. The pink, curvy font in the credits of “Drive” triggers an immediate sense-memory: ah, yes, early ’80s, straight-to-HBO action picture.
Whi
ch is in the ballpark, although “Drive” also draws its inspiration from a special kind of 1970s road movie — “The Driver” and “Vanishing Point” among them — that featured minimalist attitude and an avant garde spirit.
Sound like a film buff’s exercise? It is. But “Drive” is also a movie made with sleek, sometimes exhilarating confidence.
The hero is too cool to have a name. And he drives. Really well. He’s played by Ryan Gosling, who does his best to channel his inner Steve McQueen.
By day an L.A. auto mechanic and stuntman, by night a hired driver for various criminal activities, the driver adheres to a strict professional code. In a couple of razor-sharp action sequences, we get to see how he executes that code.
This movie wouldn’t exist unless something came along to shake his composure. This takes the form of his attractive neighbor (Carey Mulligan, from “An Education”) who’s raising her little boy while her jailbird husband (Oscar Isaac) waits to get out of prison.
I know, I know. Not just a woman, but a little kid. Yet director Nicolas Winding Refn mutes this cornball situation by holding steady with his sleek, monosyllabic style.
I liked the way the film doesn’t spell everything out. There’s a criminal subplot, involving the driver’s boss (Bryan Cranston) and a couple of gangsters (Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman), that plays like an anxiety dream where you can’t get all the information you need because large portions of the story keep happening outside your view.
As a viewer, you have to stay on edge because of that. And also because of Gosling’s disciplined performance, the marvelously sinister-yet-human turn by Brooks, and the throwback synthesizer music by Cliff Martinez.
Winding Refn, the Danish filmmaker who did “Bronson” and the mystical Viking picture “Valhalla Rising,” knows movies, and “Drive” is very, very clever.
And sometimes more than that. For a movie with its share of borrowed effects, Brooks’ character is a very 21st century original, and the husband is refreshing for not turning out to be a complete jerk. Also, the movie’s got a fine eye for Los Angeles storefronts and alleys, which look authentic yet also like some abandoned backlot.
Winding Refn, who won the best director prize at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, is unabashedly walking in the footsteps of other filmmakers such as Michael Mann and Walter Hill. But his strides are awfully cool.
“Drive” (3 and ½ stars)
Ryan Gosling is an unnamed driver whose cool, professional exterior is tested by his proximity to a woman (Carey Mulligan), a gangster (Albert Brooks) and a criminal job that might be one too many. Director Nicolas Winding Refn is paying homage to a certain kind of existential action picture here and he assembles the pieces very, very cleverly.
Rated: R for violence, language.
Showing: Alderwood Mall, Cinebarre, Everett Stadium, Galaxy Monroe, Marysville, Stanwood, Meridian, Metro, Thorton Place, Woodinville, Cascade Mall, Oak Harbor.
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