Drive Review

"You put this kid behind the wheel of a car and there is nothing he can't do." - Shannon

I didn't think movies like this were made anymore. I know, it is done mostly in homage, but the mixture of 80s style with late 60s dark tones in movies for Drive was refreshing. I heard this was intriguing, but I honestly did go in expecting more of a Transporter type action film. Imagine my surprise that it was an independent action movie (one of my favorite genre splices). While I will address the movie's visible flaws, I will mainly be detailing what I found so interesting about it along with the usual monkey business.

Based on the novel by James Sallis, Drive is, naturally, about a driver. The nameless Driver (Ryan Gosling) is a professional and pragmatic motorist. He makes his living in Los Angeles where he works as stunt driver for Hollywood action movies by day (irony, I guess), but occasionally he will act as a getaway driver for criminals. But despite living his life very minimally, almost as if he was just another part for his car, The Driver manages to befriend his neighbors, a single mother Irene (Carey Mulligan) and her son. Their growing bond is interrupted by the arrival of Irene's ex-con husband, who brings with him some seedy criminal baggage, including two menacing gangsters (Albert Brooks & Ron Perlman). Realizing the family is in danger, The Driver puts himself on the line to ensure their safety. He does this with extreme prejudice.

I realized immediately that this is a pretty overused story. It's the classic western scenario, a quiet nameless hero with a dark past wanders into the lives of some beautiful but unfortunate people and discovers that there are some things worth fighting for, then cue epic good vs evil battle. So, it's nothing new. But it is well done. And it is one of the better ones I've seen in awhile.

The acting department is small this time; not excellent but interesting, nonetheless. Of course, the face of this film is Ryan Gosling as The Driver. Over the past few years, Gosling has proven himself to be a charismatic and talented actor, even earning himself an Best Actor Oscar nomination previously. Unfortunately, this is not the movie to see that displays his full range. This is because The Driver character is very stoic, a man of few words. He purposely defines himself by his expertise, consumed by his craft and solitude. It in those brief moments where the character's true personality starts to break out that Gosling shines. The starring actress Carey Mulligan also suffers from the movie's emphasis on subtlety. In the role of Irene, the single mother, she also appears as a soft spoken figure, endearingly innocent but soft spoken still. Her role is primarily as a macGuffin, the motivation The Driver needs to progress the plot. I know she is already praised as a superior young actress, but I wish this wasn't the first role I've seen her in; it isn't a bad role, just not a very interesting one, even if the subtlety was intentional. And speaking of poorly utilized actresses, Christina Hendricks from Madmen is in this movie in a role that could literally be played by any hot actress. Hendricks is also a competent and well recognized star, and she has maybe three scenes in this and has lines in, I think, only one of them. Stellar. The primary supporting characters in this movie are pretty solid, however. I'm glad to see Oscar Isaac act as a believable guy as opposed to that cheesy villain he played in Sucker Punch. I felt for his character Standard, the recently paroled husband who tries to get out but...well, you know how it goes. Bryan Cranston isn't Walter White in this movie, the complete opposite, in fact. As Shannon he is a nice and sympathetic character, but his clear vulnerability puts you on edge whenever he is around the cold gangsters. Speaking of which, if Ryan Gosling's badassery or Christina Hendricks' chest don't sell people on this movie, Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman will as the Jewish gangsters Bernie and Dino. Perlman is an amusingly abrasive troublemaker, just the way we like him. Brooks is the real big bad here, though (I mean, he's not Frank Scorpio big bad, but it's pretty villainous). He is a testy, aggravated old criminal who wants to be reasonable, make money, and stay out of trouble, but is willing to tie up loose ends when things go wrong. So the acting was pretty decent, but I just think it could have been so much more impressive if the characters had been a bit more expressive. I know it's noir and everyone is shrouded in mystery, but, come on.

I'd be surprised if this didn't appeal to the art house crowd, Drive seems tailor made for that demographic. It is directed by Nicholas Winding Refn (a director chosen by Gosling), known as a visually fascinating and highly stylized director, so I guess the artsy aspect of the movie is kind of unavoidable. That doesn't mean its bad. The cinematography is gorgeous, with the cool light and dark contrasts so often found in film noir, and the overall handling of the film seems pretty well done. There are moments, glaring moments, when the art is overbearing (characters in this movie have pauses long enough and silent enough to make Christopher Walken role his eyes). That is this film's real problem: this is indeed a style over substance movie; too much of either is usually very apparent and often irritating. The thing is both style and substance within this movie resonated with me, it was just blatantly obvious that directorial art was held in higher regard than Hossein Amini's moody script.

Another criticism was the gory violence of the movie. It is not as if this was straight up gorn, in fact, the violence comes in so much later in the film that it still catches you off guard even if you do know about it. The complaints were that the violence was over the top. Well, I guess it is kind of. I haven't seen characters kill other characters so bluntly and viciously and quickly like this very often. But, thinking realistically, if someone is getting shot or stabbed blood will get everywhere. And to add to that, none of the dangerous players in this movie don't care about showy fist fights or kickboxing or gun kata, they try to kill each other brutally and quickly; The Driver takes guys down before they even get a chance to attack him. Over the top or realistic, either way, the instances of violence are undeniably hardcore.

However, what really struck me were the influences this movie seemed to have proudly on its sleeve. Drive is inspired by many introspective, psychological thrillers and dramas that famously stood out in cinema of the last 50 or 60 years. As opposed to huge marketable actioners like The Fast and The Furious or Transporter, Drive has more of the feel of a movie like Bullitt (with the precise, tricky, but not totally implausible driving) or Taxi Driver (with a disturbed individual going to messy extremes to protect innocence/family values). The pacing, soundtrack, and photography is very much inspired by smooth 80s thrillers; love the credits with the hot pink font cast over LA at night. I actually downloaded The Driver's theme song that played throughout the movie.

All in all, Drive may have been a bit misleading in its advertisements, the characters may been overly nuanced and underdeveloped, and there was that weird scene involving a beach and a latex mask, but I still found myself enjoying it. I can clearly see how polarizing movies like these are nowadays, but to be fair, movies like this aren't made a lot anymore. This is a movie where the characters sort of let their actions dictate what kind of people they are, it takes a lot of time to bury itself into its own dark tones. It is visually impressive, the acting was exceptional when it was allowed to be, and I just like what they did with the story (though overused, I still love this hero scenario). I was glad my suspicions weren't correct and it wasn't a rehash of an explosive Grant Theft Auto type movie; even if the movie isn't great, I still would rather see a movie like this than one of those.

Three out of four swallowed bullets.

This has been a rather lengthy from Your Modest Guru. Thanks for reading.

The Thing (2011) Review

"It's not human. Yet." - Tagline

I've never been particularly picky, so maybe this movie was worse than I thought it was. It certainly is not as good or as scary as John Carpenter's remake from the '80s. But as a prequel that tries to tie into the other movie, I'd say it did a decent job. My skepticism arose early on as I initially thought this was another goddamn remake, but later it was because I thought they wouldn't be able to pull off The Thing these days. But all of the problems I thought I would have with the prequel turned out to be rather enjoyable and still ended up being disappointed that the movie's problems were the problems of a remake. As a prequel, I thought The Thing would have zero or ham-handed continuity, which I don't think it really did. As for the remake problems, it could not help but go through the exact same scenarios in this film that they went through in the first.

Being it is a prequel, the new Thing follows the Norwegian science team the heroes from the original film discovered. These were the people who found The Thing and its spaceship in a glacier in Antarctica, so they of course are not going to make it. Along for the ride is the protagonist, paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), who is recruited to oversee the excavation of the alien. A tampering with the ice block it is incased in allows the thing to break free from it's confinement and escape. You know how this goes. After killing the initial monster, Kate discovers that the alien's cells were infecting and imitating the cells of its victims. It becomes apparent to her that the thing has already started to kill and transform into the other scientists. But who is human and who is an alien. And the fight for survival begins. Grab your flamethrowers and trust no one.

Now I'm guessing what most people are concerned about is the technical aspects of this movie in comparison to the 1982 classic. It doesn't really compare. I mean they try to get as close to how The Thing looks when it just explodes into a violent monster of gore, but the computer generated effects never look especially real, not like something you could touch or believe could touch you. I will say the filmmakers are at inventive in how they made the special effects. It felt like they were trying as best as they could to remain true to the original version. The transformation scenes are on a similar level of grotesque and intense (really does feel like it'd be hard to react when a guy's whole body turns into half a dozen aliens). The gore aspect is almost as gratuitous as it was in the first film, which is good. I was afraid they'd try to tone it down or something. Really this did have some hardcore, freaky-ass moments in this movie.

Unfortunately, the plot is where it gets murky. Granted, the filmmakers do do a good job of making it appear like its a different kind of story, but, fundamentally, it is the same movie. A lot of the same scenarios play out here, but they tweak what happens in these bits in ways that were fresh enough to make to forgive it. But the fact that the same type of events happened in both the Norwegian station and the American one is not very unreasonable, given the nature of the thing. I surprisingly got some effect out of the story. I still managed to care about some of the characters; most of them seemed like likable people, especially for scientists and contractors. I could guess who was who too many times, but the reveals still ended up freaking me out. This is a prequel, however, so everything has to segue with the first film inevitably. I think the movie manages this well throughout the film, earning a little "oh yeah, that's cool" every now and then.

The acting was really well rounded. No one seemed like they were unbelievable (even though they all should be better dressed for Antarctica). The main star is Mary Winstead as the heroine, Kate. Winstead is a good actress who has proven competent in just about everything I've seen her in. And I bought her as this character. She's not Kurt Russell as MacReady, but she really does have that Sigourney Weaver vibe; that idealistic, uncompromising, but vulnerable Ellen Ripley thing. It works though and its not glaring. The actual Kurt Russell, problem solver guy character is filled by Joel Edgerton, who does a fairly good job as that guy. He's not totally MacReady, but he's just a guy like MacReady. There's always one in horror movies. Adewale long middle name Agbaji plays another American contractor alongside Edgerton, and I continue to ask how the hell is this guy getting such bad roles. Agbaji is a good actor, but his role here could have been filled by literally anybody. And yet still, he was decent even without doing much. Eric Christian Olsen is Kate's friend and the bad doctor's researcher Adam, and I actually thought he did good job for, again, such a minor role. Character actor Ulrich Thomson plays a corrupt douchebag once again as the head researcher who puts science before everything excluding his own life. All of the Norwegian team actors did well, considering their only main relevance was to die. The most notable one is Jorgen Langhelle as the intense Norwegian badass, Lars, a character we may already be a bit familiar with. I didn't have much of a problem with the acting.

Now for the creature itself. Is The Thing any better or any worse? Well, it certainly doesn't beat the horrific organic yet contagious look of the original, everything spewing from and ripping out of that hunk of fake human. Doesn't surpass that. In this movie, The Thing is clearly CGI throughout (though, I've read there are moments when special effects makeup or stop motion was used). That doesn't mean there is not a certain freakish quality to be applied to these new special effects. For one thing, the transformations happen a helluva lot faster. Bodies just sort of explode in a bloody mess of tentacles and jaws. The amount of razor sharp teeth for heads appearing in this movie could have convinced me I was watching Resident Evil walkthroughs. The thing and its many incarnations are all fleshy, pussing, swollen, ever changing globs of chaos. But one particular contrast would be that this thing is quick on its feet (its common with horror movies these days) as opposed to the original's tendency to either flail or just sort of expand. An interesting detail is that the first form we see it in, when it breaks from the ice, looks vaguely insectoid, almost like a different creature. It occurred to me that the thing's alien ship probably belonged to some other alien species that the thing encountered, killed, and imitated. Or not.

In the end, this The Thing prequel is not too bad for a modern monster movie. As stated, there are some hardcore moments. And the way this movie connects with the '80s film is satisfying in its own way. Aside from essentially rehashing the first movie in ways that ranged from refreshing to irritating, I rather enjoyed this flick. You might too.

Two and a half out of four fillings.

This has been a review ripe for Halloween from Your Modest Guru. Thanks for reading.