Drive (2011)

80's aesthetics, Chromatics, late nite driving, brutal violence. Drive (dir. Nicolas Winding Refn) is a tough film with arthouse sensibilities. The main character - driver, for the movies and for people with shady agendas - remains elusive and taciturn, and throughout the movie, he has this weird look on his face. The driver meets a girl whose husband returns from jail. The ex-con is in trouble and the driver's love for the girl and her kid makes him help the man - and ends up in a mess. The question is whether Drive is a mere stylistic exercise. Well, maybe it is, but it is a good-looking one, with eerie atmosphere and great cinematography. The violence, however, is gratuitous and could have been left out completely. But honestly: as a trashy thriller movie, Drive is far superior to its explosion and action-centered peers. I mean, even as a person rarely bemused by action-flicks, I have to admit that the driving scenes - augmented by slick music - are shamelessly impressive, mostly because they stay quiet, focusing on grim-looking L.A: non-places, parking lots, the urban desert. Drive's slow and icy aesthetics borrows one or two things from Cronenberg's Crash. Sadly, the film loses its grip after about half of its running time, only to continue on the path of ultra-violence and mobster tough-guy dialogue.