DRIVE

I was expecting a 10 movie and it wasn't -  so part of my acute disappointment  is reflected in my rating of 7. Bill agrees.

The acting was superb and the photography was great and the action scenes were fantastic and exciting; it was all the other stuff. Like the music which was jarring and too loud and didn't seem to fit with what was going on in the movie. One especially intrusive moment was an operatic song (loud) done at a ho-hum part of the movie; i was expecting that with a melody so strong and germanic opera powerful that something significant was about to happen. Nada.

Ryan Gosling who plays the lead role as the driver is so very good-looking (in a way; better even than Johnny Depp who is soon to appear in another kaleidoscopic disaster film adaptation of a Hunter Thompson short story.) and is a master at the enigmatic look, the half-smile, the pregnant pause, the ability to mirror his emotions through his eyes but it was way way way overdone.

And Carey Mulligan (the gal with the dimple) also communicates that way; slowly and with long looks and dimpling before she answers a simple question like "what's your name?"; everything is fraught with glacial boredom instead of tension.

and that was the worst thing about the movie especially the first half; whenever the film switched to building a relationship or attempting to show a character's motivations or just plain talk, it bogged down into Soma-land.

The opening scene was dynamite; Gosling driving a get-away car for 2 robbers and hearing on the police radio that his car had been identified. He kept his cool throughout all his maneuvers to escape being caught and it was a great sequence. During the second half of the movie when violence of a high magnitude occurs (Albert Brooks providing some particularly gruesome rage.) and the story develops, it got more exciting but not enough to make up for the first part plus the ending was disappointing.

I should briefly mention the plot; Carey Mulligan's husband gets out of jail and his and his wife's life is threatened by some thugs cuz of money he owes; before the husband got released, Gosling and Mulligan began seeing each other and he didn't want anything to happen to her or her son so he volunteers to do a robbery to pay back the money and the debt. and things go terribly awry.  just like this film.