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Taking a deeper look at current and past films and how they relate to the world today.

Jonathan Kim is an independent film critic who writes and produces film reviews for Uprising and other outlets. He is a former co-producer at Brave New Films.

Read his reviews online at ReThinkReviews.net. Watch his videos at www.youtube.com/user/jsjkim, and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/ReThinkReviews. ReThink Reviews’ theme song is by Restavrant.

Drive

The new film ‘Drive’ is being marketed as a slightly artsy car chase action movie, with Ryan Gosling playing a nameless stunt driver moonlighting as a wheelman who gets tied up with the wrong woman, the wrong job and the wrong guys. But ‘Drive’ also won the Best Director prize at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Palme d’Or, and Cannes is not known for awarding crowdpleasing fare. That should probably give you a hint that ‘Drive’ is going for more than thrills, and the vibe of the film often reminded me of a combination of Martin Scorcese’s ‘Taxi Driver’ with the tone and pacing of a David Lynch film. But that begs the question: is ‘Drive’ the kind of movie you enjoy, or just admire?

The premise of ‘Drive’ is extremely promising. As we hear in the film’s opening dialogue, the driver has just a few simple rules. For the right price, he gives his clients a five-minute window to commit whatever crime they want. As long as Driver isn’t involved and his clients beat the clock, he’ll use his considerable driving skills and savvy to deliver them to the agreed-upon destination. And the opening of ‘Driver’, as you watch him evade and outrun the police jobs through the streets of downtown Los Angeles, is as electrifying as any scene you’ll watch this year.

However, that opening chase is one of only two car chases in the entire movie, which is bound to disappoint a lot of action fans, especially after the creativity and promise of the first chase. So what we have left is an emerging genre that’s being called “car noir”, where hard-boiled crime stories unfold around guys and the cars they drive.

Which is what happens to Driver as he and his mechanic mentor (played by Bryan Cranston) make a deal to buy and race a stock car with two gangsters played by Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman. At the same time, Driver becomes involved with a single mom named Irene (played by Carey Mulligan) whose husband has just been released from prison and is being blackmailed into committing a dangerous robbery.

Driver is an intense, mysterious man of few words, which unfortunately manifests itself in extremely slow, drawn-out conversations with Irene, where tens of seconds elapse between exchanges. However, this is what earns my comparison to ‘Taxi Driver’, since both films have soft-spoken, strange but seemingly nice loners who are eventually revealed to be dangerously unhinged with a peculiar sense of justice. Fans of ‘The Notebook’ beware, since the violence in ‘Drive’ is graphic, dark and jarring.

Mulligan is exceedingly sympathetic and Brooks, Perlman and Cranston add some nice energy, but Driver’s stoic silence and slow-motion conversations drain much of it. And while Gosling’s performance and physical presence is reminiscent of a young Marlon Brando, his character provides little for audiences to relate to.

There are plenty of loud, cynical, forgettable action films in the world, and the makers of ‘Drive’ deserve some credit for trying something different with the film’s look, tone, and its quiet, violent, morally ambiguous hero. So I feel a bit guilty saying that ‘Drive’, well, really could’ve used more driving. The ad campaign would have you believe that ‘Drive’ oozes cool and is full of non-stop action, but the coolness often feels cold, and the film’s two great chases end up as mere glimpses of what could have been.

‘Drive’ is rated R and opens today.