My favorite movies: Drive

Drive is just one of those movies that you have to see to believe.

I know you're thinking, "Oh that's that corny cliche'd crap," but I'm gonna be honest with you. Drive is a type of movie that doesn't come around often. It's the type of movie that spawns cults. It's the type of movie that you can garner a friendship over and the type of a movie you can end a friendship over. It's a movie that manages to be heartfelt, gripping, horrifying, funny, and all sorts of other emotions all at once, and I think it's probably one of the best kept secrets out there.

I really wouldn't have found Drive if it weren't for Chris Stuckmann...aka, my number one inspiration for starting this blog. I stumbled upon his video for this movie here and I was transfixed. I wanted to know more. So I rented it on iTunes, and I already knew from the first few minutes that I was in for a treat. An hour or so later, I was absolutely moved by this piece of cinema...and now I understand why Chris gushed about it so much.

The story follows an unnamed man only known as the driver (Ryan Gosling) who is a driver for hire for various criminals as well as a stunt driver and a shop attendant for Shannon (Bryan Cranston) who's in deep with the mafia. The driver's life starts to look up as he meets Irene (Carey Mulligan) and her son Benicio, and they immediately hit it off, and the Driver begins to spend more time with Irene and Benicio.

Things start to go downhill however as Irene's husband and Benicio's father, Standard (Oscar Isaacs), gets out of prison and comes home. After Standard gets beaten by two thugs, the Driver offers his help, finding out that Standard owes some big times from prison money. They're set up with a pawn shop robbery in the valley outlying Los Angeles, and everything is going well, until Standard is killed. The Driver finds out that they've been set up and thus begins his problems with the mafia.

He tracks down the money's rightful owner to Nino (Ron Perlman) and Bernie Rose (Albert Brooks), and they attempt to set up a deal to get the money back, but it all goes wrong. Instead, the Driver has to go out and get rid of them in order to save Irene and Benicio, and make sure that no one from the Mafia bothers them again.

This movie is such a quality movie. From the cinematography (the beautiful setting shots of LA, the car chase camera work, the focusing on the characters) to the acting (pretty much everyone involved in the movie), the score (the retro synth pop is beautifully fitting for this movie), it's all just so...awe-inspiring? No, that's not the correct word. But seriously, this movie is so nicely put together and so well done that I can't help but be amazed every time I watch it.

It makes me so angry that this movie was hated by most of the general public because of a simple mistake of mis-advertising. The movie was advertised as a chase movie but in reality what we got was a dark thriller, and a lot of people weren't happy. Apparently to the point of suing, so that's why most people have never seen this movie. Sometimes bad word of mouth can be good and bad, and this is one of the bad times. If only...if only...

You can already probably guess that I'm giving Drive 5 out of 5 stars, because it should be a crime not to watch this movie at least once. It's a pleasurable experience for your eyes and ears, seriously. Like, go watch this. Now. Right now. Stop reading this. NOW.