Drive (2011 film)
Encyclopedia
Drive is a 2011 American crime
neo-noir
drama film
directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, starring Ryan Gosling
as the principal character, with Carey Mulligan
, Bryan Cranston
, and Albert Brooks
. Although Drive shares several characteristics with the similarly-named 1978 Walter Hill car-chase film, The Driver
, it is actually adapted from the 2005 James Sallis
novel of the same name, with a screenplay by Hossein Amini
.
Like the book, the film is about a Hollywood stunt performer (played by Gosling) who moonlights as a getaway driver. Prior to its September 2011 release, it had been shown at a number of film festivals. At the 2011 Cannes Film Festival
, Drive was praised and even received a standing ovation
. Winding Refn won the festival's Best Director Award
for the film. Reviews from critics have been positive, with many drawing comparisons to work from previous eras. Praise has also been given to Gosling's and Brooks' performances. The director has said influences came from Bullitt
(1968) and The Day of the Locust
(1975); and that Drive was a tribute to Alejandro Jodorowsky
.
) lives in a low-rent apartment building and works as a mechanic, stunt driver, and getaway driver. His driving skills and precision are evident when he helps two burglars evade police and split up at the Staples Center
's crowded parking garage. The Driver works anonymously, never for the same people twice, and allots them only five minutes to do their business. Shannon (Bryan Cranston
) owns the garage where the Driver works and sets up his other jobs. Shannon borrows $300,000 from mobster Bernie Rose (Albert Brooks
) and buys a stock car for the Driver to race. Bernie agrees to back the plan after he sees the Driver's skills. Bernie's business partner is a Jewish mobster named Nino (Ron Perlman
) who once had Shannon's pelvis broken when he found out Shannon overcharged him.
The Driver helps his neighbor, Irene (Carey Mulligan
), and her young son, Benicio (Kaden Leos), when Irene has car trouble at a local market. Later, Irene has her car towed to Shannon's garage, and the Driver gives her and Benicio a ride home. The Driver begins spending more time with Irene and Benicio and even has dinner with them after Irene's husband, Standard (Oscar Isaac
), comes home from prison. Standard owes "protection money
" to an Albanian gangster
, who goes by the name Cook (James Biberi
), dating back from his time in prison. Cook beats Standard and threatens to come after Irene and Benicio if Standard does not rob a pawn shop.
The Driver agrees to help Standard placate Cook by driving Standard to and from the pawn shop. Blanche (Christina Hendricks
), a woman associated with Cook, also participates in the heist. The job goes wrong, and Standard is shot dead by the pawn shop owner as he returns to the car. The Driver leaves with Blanche and the money, but a car follows him and tries to run him off the road. The Driver eludes the other vehicle, and he and Blanche hide out in a motel room. The Driver discovers that the amount of money is much more than he expected for a pawn shop robbery. He threatens to hurt Blanche if she does not tell the truth. She tells him the car belonged to Cook, and they planned to double-cross the Driver and Standard and take the money for themselves. Suddenly, two of Cook's men attack them in the motel room, killing Blanche with a shotgun blast to the head and injuring the Driver before he kills them both.
The Driver confronts Cook in his strip club and learns that Nino has been behind the heist all along. Nino later explains to Bernie that the money from the pawn shop belonged to the East Coast Mafia
. Fearing retaliation if it becomes known who was behind the robbery, Bernie stabs Cook to death and tells Nino to take care of the Driver while he takes care of Shannon. The Driver agrees to give Nino the money in exchange for Irene and Benicio's safety. However, Nino sends a hitman to their apartment building. The Driver and Irene unknowingly ride the elevator with the hitman, but the Driver notices his concealed gun. The Driver gives Irene a quick kiss before overpowering the hitman, dispatching him by repeatedly stomping on his head before a stunned Irene. Bernie finds Shannon attemping to flee town and slits Shannon's wrist in his garage with a straight razor
.
The Driver lures Nino to a beach in his car and t-bones
him. With Nino wounded and weakened, the Driver drowns him in the Pacific Ocean
. Bernie calls the Driver, telling him to meet at a Chinese restaurant. The Driver
then makes a final phone call to Irene, to tell her he was leaving and thanking her for her time with him. At the restaurant, Bernie promises Irene and Benicio's safety in exchange for the money, but not the Driver's. In the parking lot, Bernie stabs the Driver in the abdomen as he pulls the money from the trunk of his car. The Driver then stabs and kills Bernie, leaving his corpse on the ground next to the satchel of money. Later that evening, Irene knocks on the Driver's apartment door, but there is no answer. The film ends with the Driver driving through the night.
and Adam Siegel of Marc Platt Productions optioned the novel after Siegel read a review of it in Publisher's Weekly. The Driver intrigued Siegel because he was "the kind of character you rarely see anymore - he was a man with a purpose; he was very good at one thing and made no apologies for it." The character interested Platt because he reminded him of movie heroes he looked up to as a child, characters typically portrayed by Steve McQueen
or Clint Eastwood
.
Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Hossein Amini
adapted the novel for the screen. He felt it was a rare book to receive from a studio because it was short, gloomy and like a poem. Because the novel does not present a linear story but has many flashbacks and jumps around in time, Amini found the adaptation challenging. He felt the non-linear structure made it "a very tricky structure" for a feature film.
A film adaptation of Drive was first announced in early 2008, with Neil Marshall
set to direct what was then being described as "an L.A.-set action mystery" that would be a starring vehicle for Hugh Jackman
. Universal Studios
, who had been trying to make a film version for years, was also onboard. By February 2010, Marshall and Jackman were no longer attached to the project, and Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn was set to direct with Ryan Gosling
in the leading role. When Ryan Gosling signed on, he was allowed to choose the director. A fan of his work, the actor chose Refn. When Refn read the first screenplay for Drive, he was more intrigued by the concept of a man having a split personality, being a stuntman by day and a getaway driver at night, than the story itself.
When it came to selecting other cast members, Refn did not cast actors based on casting tapes or auditions. Instead, he required they meet him in person at his house. Carey Mulligan
was in negotiations to star in Drive in August 2010, and she was cast soon after as a Los Angeles-born Anglo mother raising her 7-year-old Latino child. She was interested in working with Refn because she was a fan of his films Bronson
and Valhalla Rising
. The role was originally written as a Latina woman in her late 20s. Refn made script adjustments to accommodate Mulligan in the role. The filmmaker had not seen any of Mulligan's movies, but upon first seeing her, he recalled, "I knew we had our 'Irene'". He felt her casting would cement the love story in a more engaging way. "It made it more of a Romeo & Juliet kind of love story without the politics that would in this day and age be brought into it if you had different nationalities or different religions," Refn explained.
Bryan Cranston
plays the role of Shannon. A fan of Breaking Bad, he was one of the first actors Refn looked to cast. Knowing the actor had other opportunities, the director tried to interest him by asking how he would like to develop the role. After not hearing back, Refn called him, at the very same time that Cranston was writing on a piece of paper the pros and cons of doing Drive. Moved by Refn's interest, he accepted the part. Christina Hendricks
plays the small but important role of Blanche. "Trying to work in a more reality arena for a character like that," Refn originally auditioned porn stars for Blanche. However, he was unable to find anyone who was good enough acting-wise. After meeting with Hendricks, he decided to cast her, feeling her "powerhouse" persona would click with the character.
Albert Brooks
plays the foul-mouthed, morose Bernie Rose. When Refn suggested him, Gosling agreed but thought the actor would not be up for playing a character who is violent and sullen, or for appearing in a film that he did not work on himself. Brooks accepted the role to go against typecasting
and because he loved that Bernie was not a cliché. "There are six people you could always get to play this kind of part, and I like that the director was thinking outside of the box. For me, it was an opportunity to act outside the box. I liked that this mobster had real style. Also, he doesn’t get up in the morning thinking about killing people. He’s sad about it. Upset about it. It’s a case of, 'Look what you made me do.'"
Nino, a key villain, is portrayed by Ron Perlman
, one of the last actors to join the cast. Regarding the casting of Perlman, Refn said, "The character of Nino was originally not particularly interesting, so I asked Ron why he wanted to be in my movie when he’s done so many great films. When Ron said, ‘I always wanted to play a Jewish man who wants to be an Italian gangster’, and I asked why, and he said, ‘because that’s what I am – a Jewish boy from New York’, well, that automatically cemented it for me." Oscar Isaac
portrays a Latino convict named Standard who is married to Irene and is just released from prison a week after Irene meets The Driver. He found the role to be a bit unappealing and chose to turn the archetypal character into something more. He said of the role,
of about $13 million and shot in various parts of Los Angeles, California. Locations were picked by Refn while Gosling drove him around the city at night. Under Refn's request, Los Angeles was picked as the shooting site due to budget concerns. Refn moved into a Los Angeles home and insisted that the cast members and screenwriter Amini move in with him. They would work on the script and film all day, then watch films, edit or drive at night. Refn requested that the editing suite be placed in his home as well. With a shooting script of 81 pages, Refn and Gosling continued to trim down dialog during filming.
Its opening chase scene involving Gosling's character was primarily filmed by Refn within the car's interior. In an interview, Refn revealed the idea for this was to execute a "dive-ration of sharks", which involves never leaving the vehicle during a car chase so that the audience can see what's happening from the character's point of view. Tight on money and time, he shot the scene in two days. With two different set-ups prepared in the car, the director found it difficult to have mobility with the camera, so he would then switch the camera to two additional set-ups nearby. As downtown Los Angeles
had changed for the better, Refn avoided certain areas to preserve the gloomy atmosphere. Additionally, the scene was shot at low-angles with minimal light.
One scene in the film that has no dialog is the elevator sequence, "a series of stunning visuals and graphic imagery that’s a prime example of how the film conveys so many ideas and emotions through images rather than words." For this, he spoke to Gaspar Noé
and asked him how he did the head-smashing scene in Noé's Irréversible
(2002). Crossing the line from romance to violence, the scene starts off with The Driver and Irene tenderly kissing. What they share is really a goodbye kiss, as he then becomes a "werewolf", violently stomping the hit-man's head in. It is during this scene that Irene begins to see the Driver in a new light.
Car scenes were filmed with a "biscuit rig", a camera car rig developed for the film Seabiscuit
(2003), which allowed a precision driver to steer the car, freeing Gosling to concentrate on acting. Consistent with Refn's usual visual style, wide-angle lens
es were heavily used by cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel
. Handheld camerawork was avoided. Preferring to keep the film more "grounded" and authentic, Refn also avoided use of computer-generated imagery
(CGI). Unable to afford CGI due to budgeting restrictions also played a factor in this decision. Although many stunt drivers
are credited, Gosling did a number of stunts himself, after completing a stunt driving car crash course. During production, Gosling re-built the 1973 Chevrolet Malibu
used in the film, taking it apart and putting it back together. Filming concluded in November 2010.
Beth Mickle was hired as Drives production designer
on Gosling recommendation after working together on 2006's Half Nelson
. Prior to filming, Mickle supervised a crew of 40, routinely working 16-to-18-hour days. Her most expensive film to date, Mickle felt freer since, unlike Half Nelson, "there was another zero added to the budget." They built Gosling's character's apartment building, which included a hallway and elevator that linked his unit to Irene's. Mickle also made a strip club and re-created Brooks' character's apartment in an abandoned building. Turning a "run-of-the-mill" Los Angeles auto body shop
into a grandiose dealership was one of the most challenging. Painting the walls an electric blue color, she brought in a showroom full of vintage cars.
Using an Arri Alexa camera, the film was shot digitally
. According to Drives executive producer Lancaster, the film contains abundant, evocative, intense images of Los Angeles that are not often seen. "From the little seen back streets of downtown LA to the dry arid outposts on the peaks of the desert landscape surrounding it, Siegel has re-imagined an LA all the way down to the rocky cliffs by the sea." Drab background settings include the Southern California commercial strip. As the Los Angeles Times
pointed out, whenever gleaming buildings are shown, it is because they are being seen from a far distance. Refn shot those scenes from a helicopter at night in Bunker Hill, Los Angeles.
While Drive is set in the present day, it carries a heavy 1980s atmosphere that is cautiously set from beginning to end and is underlined not only by the vehicles or music
and clothes, but also by its architecture. The parts of the city seen in the Valley and by downtown Los Angeles are actually cheap stucco
and mirrored glass, which has been carefully edited to leave out mostly any obviously new buildings.
(1968). A character study, themes Drive examines consist of "loyalty, loneliness and the dark impulses that rise up even when we try our hardest to suppress them." It combines comic gore, film noir
and B-movie
aesthetics, and Hollywood spectacle, resulting in "a bizarre concoction...reminiscent of David Lynch
's Mulholland Drive
...Quentin Tarantino
's Pulp Fiction
, and [with] angst-laden love scenes that would not be out of place in a Scandinavian drama". Other comparisons have been to the works of Walter Hill, John Carpenter
, Michael Mann, Nathanael West
, J.G. Ballard and Mike Davis
. According to Refn, Drive is dedicated to filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky
and includes some of Jodorowsky's existentialism.
Drive has been called a tough, hard-edged neo-noir
art house feature, extremely violent and very stylish, with European art and grindhouse
influences. According to Refn, Drive turns into a superhero film
during the elevator scene because that is when The Driver kills the reprobates. Drive also references 1970s and 1980s cult hits
such as The Day of the Locust
(1975) and To Live and Die in L.A. (1985). Other influences can be seen in the neon-bright opening credits and the retro song picks – "a mix of tension-ratcheting synthesizer tones and catchy club
anthems that collectively give the film its consistent tone." Drives title sequence
is hot-pink, which was inspired by 1983's Risky Business
editing table.
Refn's main inspiration for Drive came from Grimm's Fairy Tales
, and his goal was to make a movie that was structured like a fairy tale: condensed in its storytelling and with archetypal characters. Refn sees The Driver as a knight who roams around the countryside searching for people to save. To play with the common theme of fairytales, The Driver protects what is good while at the same time killing degenerate people in violent ways. Refn was also inspired by films such as Point Blank (1969), Two-Lane Blacktop
(1971), and The Driver
(1978). Jean-Pierre Melville’s crime productions influenced the cinematography
. Amini's script propensity imposes "a kind of sideways moral code," where even those who comply with it are almost never rewarded for their efforts, as seen when The Driver helps Shannon with Irene and her son's best interests in mind. Within their vehicle's, the characters not only make escapes or commit murder, but try to obtain peace and search for romance.
The film's main character, The Driver, has been compared to the Man With No Name, a character Clint Eastwood portrayed in the Sergio Leone
westerns, because he almost never speaks and communicates mostly non-verbally. The Driver's meager dialogue is not designed to present him as tough, but to soften him. Refn chose to give The Driver very little dialogue and instead have him drive around listening to pop music
, taking control when it counts. One reviewer noted that what The Driver lacks in psychology, he makes up through action and stylish costuming. The Driver's wardrobe was inspired by the band KISS
and Kenneth Anger
's 1964 experimental film
Scorpio Rising
. He wears a satin jacket with a logo of a golden scorpion
; Refn sees the former as the character's armor and the logo a sign of protection. According to reviewer Peter Canavese, the jacket is a reference to the fable
of the scorpion and the frog
, mentioned in the movie, which in turn evokes the use of the fable in the Orson Welles
film Mr. Arkadin
.
-pop score was composed by Cliff Martinez
, whose ambient work on the sex, lies, and videotape
soundtrack Refn was a particular fan of. The score contains tracks with vintage keyboards and bluntly descriptive titles. Refn wanted electronic music for the film and to have the music occasionally be abstract so viewers can see things from The Driver's perspective. He gave composer Martinez a sampling of songs he liked and asked Martinez to emulate the sound, resulting in "a kind of retro
, 80ish, synthesizer
europop
". Editor Matt Newman suggested Drives opening credits song"Nightcall
" by French electronic musician Kavinsky
and featuring Lovefoxxx
.
As Refn was going through mixer Johnny Jewel's catalog, he picked out "Under Your Spell" and "A Real Hero" because he thought of Drive being a fairytale. During Drives climax, "A Real Hero"'s keynote melody, about becoming "a real human being, and a real hero", refrains because that is when The Driver changes into both those status'. At first, Jewel worried that the latter might be too literal but soon realized it is used in Drive "in the exact same way that I was feeling it when I wrote it. He definitely got the nuance of the song, and understood what it was supposed to mean, and he wanted to give that emotion to the viewer, that same feeling."
Thinking of music in terms of basic elements, Jewel would tell the director that for certain scenes, it should not have bass since, as an earth tone, it usually is used for a more emotional or ominous part. Jewel thought the music should be upper register and relaxing for the "dreamlike" scene. To help himself with the writing process and conjure up melodies, the mixer would perform a procedure where he highlighted many phrases from the novel, then printed those words in large font and hung them on his walls or drew pictures during viewings of Drive.
Sold as Drive (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack), it was released in CD format to stores on September 27 2011, by Lakeshore Records
. Prior to that however, thanks to viral reviews, such as those found on social networking website Twitter
, the soundtrack has sold well on iTunes
climbing as high as number four on the sales charts. So far, the 19 track album has amassed positive reviews. James Verniere of the Boston Herald
gave it an "A" grade, stating "The cool crowd isn’t just watching Drive; they’re listening to it, too... The Drive soundtrack is such an integral part of the experience of the film, once you see it, you can’t imagine the film without it." Allmusic reviewer James Christopher Monger selected opening track "Nightcall", "I Drive", "Hammer" and "Bride of Deluxe" as highlights on it. Digital Spy
s Mayer Nissim gave it a four out of five star rating, finding it to be as important as the film itself. She stated the album beginning with non-Martinez songs instead of mixing it up for a more enjoyable listening experience cost it a star.
, Drive was eventually re-labeled as an independent film
. Prior to principal photography
, Refn went to the 2010 Cannes Film Festival
in an effort to sell the rights to Drive and released promotional posters for the film. In November 2010, FilmDistrict acquired North American distribution rights. The owners were so eager to get their hands on Drive, they started negotiating to buy it before seeing any footage, believing it could appeal to people who enjoy a genre movie, as well as the arthouse crowd. The film had a release date of September 16, 2011, in the United States.
The film premiered on May 20, in competition at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival
. At its first showing to the media, it received abundant praise and received "some of the best responses of the festival", but one positive review said it "can't win, won't win" Cannes's top prize. It was greeted with hoots and howls of joy from the media, with viewers cheering on some of the scenes featuring extreme violence. Drive also received a 15 minute standing ovation
from the crowd. Xan Brooks of The Guardian
called the film his guilty pleasure of the 2011 competition, labeling it an enjoyable affair. "Over the past 10 days we've witnessed great art and potent social commentary; the birth of the cosmos and the end of the world. Turns out what we really wanted all along was a scene in which a man gets his head stomped in a lift. They welcome it in like a long-lost relation", he wrote. The festival named Refn best director for Drive.
Drive was also screened at the Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Film Festival
(LAFF) on June 20 at its gala screenings program. It was among more than 200 feature films, short projects, and music videos, from more than 30 countries, to be shown at the festival. After Red Dog
s release date was pushed up by several days, Drive replaced it as the Melbourne International Film Festival
's closing night film. Additionally, the movie was screened during FilmDistrict's studio panel presentation at the San Diego Comic-Con function. A secret screening for Drive was held at London's Empire Big Screen during the middle of August. In September, Drive screened as a special presentation during the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival
, alongside another movie starring Gosling, The Ides of March
.
Marketing done for Drive suggested it to be a film composed of many action scenes. A Michigan woman named Deming has sued both FilmDistrict and Emagine Theaters located in Novi, Michigan
in October 2011 due to suffering "damages"
, feeling that the previews were misleading. Filing under the Michigan Consumer Protection Act, she stated its distributer marketed Drive as similar to the Fast and the Furious
film series, and, in a bait and switch act, gave her a motion picture with little racing. Furthermore, Deming accused Drive of containing antisemitic themes. Deming has asked for the cost of her ticket to be refunded, and later plans to file a class action lawsuit to prevent future false film advertising.
reports that 92% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 211 reviews, with an average score of 8.2/10, making the film a "certified Fresh" on the website's rating system. On Metacritic
it has a weighted score of 79/100, based on 40 critics, which it ranks as "Generally favorable reviews". Gosling's and Brooks' performances, as well as Drives aesthetics, were generally the most praised aspects of the film by movie critics. Rolling Stone writer Peter Travers
considered this film to be the type to evoke polarized reception among its viewers. CinemaScore
polls reflect this sentiment, with audiences grading it with a "C-" average, noting its slow, meditative nature. IMDb audience rankings, however, placed Drive at an average of 8.2 out of a possible 10 while 73% of those polled by Rotten Tomatoes reported to have "liked" the film.
Peter Debruge of Variety
praised Drive for standing out from other similarly themed films whose visuals and narration fall flat. However, Debruge expected more driving scenes and found Mulligan to be a misfit for Irene. Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter
called Drive a "tasty, if sketchy, modern noir with car chases and bloody action that should turn the trick for genre-seeking audiences." Noting Drive's "wonderfully assembled" cast, he said Gosling takes on the right behavior for his role, making a bid to enter the ranks of Steve McQueen and Clint Eastwood. In contrast to Debruge, McCarthy found Mulligan to be a charming choice for Irene. Reviewing it for the Chicago Sun-Times
, Roger Ebert
wrote: "The entire film, in fact, seems much more real than the usual action-crime-chase concoctions we've grown tired of. Here is a movie with respect for writing, acting and craft. It has respect for knowledgable moviegoers."
Movieline
's Stephanie Zacharek thought Drive defined the current standard for motion pictures, and Mike D'Angelo of the The A.V. Club
gave it a "B+" rating, saying he will remember at least half a dozen of the movie's scenes for the rest of his life. Chris Lackner of the Vancouver Sun echoed a comment similar to Zacharek's, finding Drive to be a refreshing different change of pace, avoiding Hollywood's trite film formula routine. Awarding the film a four out five star rating, Orlando Sentinel
journalist Roger Moore deemed Drive to be "the quietest car picture ever" and, based on what he had seen with this production, said he was looking forward to future collaborations between the star and director. Jessica Winter of Time
said the scene involving the twofer car crash makes Drive for a moment turn into "a lost entry in the Halloween franchise
Michael Myers Hits the Beach.
Karen Durbin of Elle
praised the chemistry between Gosling and Mulligan, pointing out that Drive does not conform to typical male-entertainment. She also rebuked Refn for underusing Hendricks. Grading it a "B+", Entertainment Weekly
reviewer Lisa Schwarzbaum clashed with Durban's opinion on the former, finding the two to never click. Despite giving Drive a high star rating, The Arizona Republic
s Randy Cordova criticized how the plot and characters all easily come together: "It's all too neat; someone like John Sayles
(Lone Star
) could have linked these elements in a far more compelling way." Giving Drive four out of five stars, The Guardians Xan Brooks observed the film to be quite "self-consciously retro" with a series "of cool, blank surfaces".
In his polarized analysis of the film, The New York Times
columnist A. O. Scott
believed its supporting performances saved Drive from tedium. "Drive is somber, slick and earnest, and also a prisoner of its own emptiness, substituting moods for emotions and borrowed style for real audacity. This is not to say that the movie is bad as I have suggested, the skill and polish are hard to dispute but rather that it is, for all its bravado, timid and conventional." Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turran praised several aspects of Drive but overall disliked the violence executed in it. Understanding that the level of violence is not uncommon for a Refn film, he stated that it was overdone, disquieting and "throws you out of the picture, diluting the mood rather than enhancing it."
A negative review came from New York
magazine writer David Edelstein, who referred to the film as "higher trash" and deemed it to be as inane as Conan the Barbarian. Edelstein went on to chide Gosling for his choice to appear in the production and believed most viewers would watch solely for the popularity
of Drives actors. Another negative analysis came from the Chicago Tribune
s Michael Phillips. Finding its pre-credit sequence to be one of the year's most gripping openings, he felt Drive goes from compelling in the beginning to "a muddle of ultraviolence, hypocrisy and stylistic preening" by the end. Neil Rosen of NY1
echoed the latter comment, adding that the violence shown in Drive came off as lackluster.
, despite being the widest new release. Drive was originally predicted to supersede Contagion
from second place with a gross of about $12$14 million. Box Office Mojo
analyst Brandon Gray felt prior to release that its "hipster
factor" may alienate audiences like True Romance
(1993), Domino in 2005, and 2007's Eastern Promises and Shoot 'Em Up
did.
Following the weekend results, analyst Ray Subers, from the same publication, said that this film's commercial performance is yet another "example of how endless Internet hype is rarely a strong indicator of mainstream appeal
." By its second weekend, Drive remained within the top 3 at many theaters, but wound up at 7th place with a 50% drop in revenue. FilmDistrict now plans over the succeeding few weeks in terms of the number of locations to fuse in each market so the per-screen averages for core theaters in "top urban markets" will continue to be high. Currently, the picture has amassed a total of $33,393,586 from US box office and $19,000,000 from international box office.
Crime film
Crime films are films which focus on the lives of criminals. The stylistic approach to a crime film varies from realistic portrayals of real-life criminal figures, to the far-fetched evil doings of imaginary arch-villains. Criminal acts are almost always glorified in these movies.- Plays and films...
neo-noir
Neo-noir
Neo-noir is a style often seen in modern motion pictures and other forms that prominently utilize elements of film noir, but with updated themes, content, style, visual elements or media that were absent in films noir of the 1940s and 1950s.-History:The term Film Noir was coined by...
drama film
Drama film
A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...
directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, starring Ryan Gosling
Ryan Gosling
Ryan Thomas Gosling is a Canadian actor and musician. He first came to public attention as a child star on the Disney Channel's Mickey Mouse Club and went on to appear in other family entertainment programmes including Are You Afraid of the Dark? , Goosebumps , Breaker High and Young Hercules...
as the principal character, with Carey Mulligan
Carey Mulligan
Carey Hannah Mulligan is an English actress. She made her film debut as Kitty Bennet in Pride & Prejudice . She had roles in numerous British programmes and, in 2007, made her Broadway debut in The Seagull to critical acclaim....
, Bryan Cranston
Bryan Cranston
Bryan Lee Cranston is an American actor, voice actor, writer and director. He is best known for his roles as Hal the father in the Fox situation comedy Malcolm in the Middle, and Walter White in the AMC drama series Breaking Bad, for which he won three consecutive Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama...
, and Albert Brooks
Albert Brooks
Albert Lawrence Brooks is an American actor, voice actor, writer, comedian and director. He received an Academy Award nomination in 1987 for his role in Broadcast News...
. Although Drive shares several characteristics with the similarly-named 1978 Walter Hill car-chase film, The Driver
The Driver
The Driver is a 1978 crime film directed by Walter Hill and starring Ryan O'Neal, Bruce Dern, and Isabelle Adjani. Based upon similarities in plot elements, it is heavily influenced by Jean-Pierre Melville's film Le Samouraï...
, it is actually adapted from the 2005 James Sallis
James Sallis
James Sallis is an American crime writer, poet and musician, best known for his series of novels featuring the character Lew Griffin and set in New Orleans, and for his 2005 novel Drive, which was adapted into a 2011 film of the same name.He is the brother of philosopher John Sallis...
novel of the same name, with a screenplay by Hossein Amini
Hossein Amini
Hossein Amini is an Iranian screenwriter who has been working since the 1990s. He was nominated numerous awards for the 1997 film The Wings of the Dove, including an Academy Award for Best Writing – Adapted Screenplay....
.
Like the book, the film is about a Hollywood stunt performer (played by Gosling) who moonlights as a getaway driver. Prior to its September 2011 release, it had been shown at a number of film festivals. At the 2011 Cannes Film Festival
2011 Cannes Film Festival
The 64th annual Cannes Film Festival was held from May 11 to May 22, 2011. American actor Robert De Niro served as the president of the jury for the main competition and French filmmaker Michel Gondry headed the jury for the short film competition...
, Drive was praised and even received a standing ovation
Standing ovation
A standing ovation is a form of applause where members of a seated audience stand up while applauding after extraordinary performances of particularly high acclaim...
. Winding Refn won the festival's Best Director Award
Best Director Award (Cannes Film Festival)
The Best Director Award is an award presented at the Cannes Film Festival. It is chosen by the jury from the 'official section' of movies at the festival. It was first awarded in 1946....
for the film. Reviews from critics have been positive, with many drawing comparisons to work from previous eras. Praise has also been given to Gosling's and Brooks' performances. The director has said influences came from Bullitt
Bullitt
Bullitt is a 1968 American police procedural film starring Steve McQueen, Jacqueline Bisset and Robert Vaughn. It was directed by Peter Yates and distributed by Warner Bros. The story was adapted for the screen by Alan Trustman and Harry Kleiner, based on the 1963 novel Mute Witness by Robert L....
(1968) and The Day of the Locust
The Day of the Locust (film)
The Day of the Locust is a 1975 American drama film directed by John Schlesinger. The screenplay by Waldo Salt is based on the 1939 novel of the same title by Nathanael West...
(1975); and that Drive was a tribute to Alejandro Jodorowsky
Alejandro Jodorowsky
Alejandro Jodorowsky Prullansky, known as Alejandro Jodorowsky, is a Chilean filmmaker, playwright, actor, author, comic book writer and spiritual guru...
.
Plot
The unnamed Driver (Ryan GoslingRyan Gosling
Ryan Thomas Gosling is a Canadian actor and musician. He first came to public attention as a child star on the Disney Channel's Mickey Mouse Club and went on to appear in other family entertainment programmes including Are You Afraid of the Dark? , Goosebumps , Breaker High and Young Hercules...
) lives in a low-rent apartment building and works as a mechanic, stunt driver, and getaway driver. His driving skills and precision are evident when he helps two burglars evade police and split up at the Staples Center
Staples Center
Staples Center is a multi-purpose sports arena in Downtown Los Angeles. Adjacent to the L.A. Live development, it is located next to the Los Angeles Convention Center complex along Figueroa Street. Opening on October 17, 1999, it is one of the major sporting facilities in the Greater Los Angeles...
's crowded parking garage. The Driver works anonymously, never for the same people twice, and allots them only five minutes to do their business. Shannon (Bryan Cranston
Bryan Cranston
Bryan Lee Cranston is an American actor, voice actor, writer and director. He is best known for his roles as Hal the father in the Fox situation comedy Malcolm in the Middle, and Walter White in the AMC drama series Breaking Bad, for which he won three consecutive Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama...
) owns the garage where the Driver works and sets up his other jobs. Shannon borrows $300,000 from mobster Bernie Rose (Albert Brooks
Albert Brooks
Albert Lawrence Brooks is an American actor, voice actor, writer, comedian and director. He received an Academy Award nomination in 1987 for his role in Broadcast News...
) and buys a stock car for the Driver to race. Bernie agrees to back the plan after he sees the Driver's skills. Bernie's business partner is a Jewish mobster named Nino (Ron Perlman
Ron Perlman
Ronald N. "Ron" Perlman is an American television, film and voice over actor. He is known for having played Vincent in the TV series Beauty and the Beast , a Deathstroke figure known as Slade in the animated series Teen Titans, Clarence "Clay" Morrow in Sons of Anarchy, the comic book character...
) who once had Shannon's pelvis broken when he found out Shannon overcharged him.
The Driver helps his neighbor, Irene (Carey Mulligan
Carey Mulligan
Carey Hannah Mulligan is an English actress. She made her film debut as Kitty Bennet in Pride & Prejudice . She had roles in numerous British programmes and, in 2007, made her Broadway debut in The Seagull to critical acclaim....
), and her young son, Benicio (Kaden Leos), when Irene has car trouble at a local market. Later, Irene has her car towed to Shannon's garage, and the Driver gives her and Benicio a ride home. The Driver begins spending more time with Irene and Benicio and even has dinner with them after Irene's husband, Standard (Oscar Isaac
Oscar Isaac
-Personal life:Isaac was born in Guatemala to a Guatemalan mother, Maria Estrada Nicolle, and a Cuban pulmonologist father, Oscar Gonzalo Hernandez. He was raised in Miami, Florida. While in Miami, he played lead guitar and sang vocals for his band "The Blinking Underdogs"...
), comes home from prison. Standard owes "protection money
Protection racket
A protection racket is an extortion scheme whereby a criminal group or individual coerces a victim to pay money, supposedly for protection services against violence or property damage. Racketeers coerce reticent potential victims into buying "protection" by demonstrating what will happen if they...
" to an Albanian gangster
Albanian mafia
The Albanian Mafia or Albanian organized crime are the general terms used for criminal organizations based in Albania or composed of ethnic Albanians. Albanian organized crime is active in Albania, the United States, and the European Union countries, participating in a diverse range of criminal...
, who goes by the name Cook (James Biberi
James Biberi
James Biberi is an Albanian American actor. He was born in Albania.-Filmography:Biberi also provided the voice for the Police in the 2005 video game The Warriors.-External links:...
), dating back from his time in prison. Cook beats Standard and threatens to come after Irene and Benicio if Standard does not rob a pawn shop.
The Driver agrees to help Standard placate Cook by driving Standard to and from the pawn shop. Blanche (Christina Hendricks
Christina Hendricks
Christina Rene Hendricks is an actress known for her role as Joan Holloway in the AMC cable television series Mad Men, and as Saffron in Fox's short-lived series Firefly. Hendricks was named "the sexiest woman in the world" in 2010 in a poll of female readers taken by Esquire magazine.-Personal...
), a woman associated with Cook, also participates in the heist. The job goes wrong, and Standard is shot dead by the pawn shop owner as he returns to the car. The Driver leaves with Blanche and the money, but a car follows him and tries to run him off the road. The Driver eludes the other vehicle, and he and Blanche hide out in a motel room. The Driver discovers that the amount of money is much more than he expected for a pawn shop robbery. He threatens to hurt Blanche if she does not tell the truth. She tells him the car belonged to Cook, and they planned to double-cross the Driver and Standard and take the money for themselves. Suddenly, two of Cook's men attack them in the motel room, killing Blanche with a shotgun blast to the head and injuring the Driver before he kills them both.
The Driver confronts Cook in his strip club and learns that Nino has been behind the heist all along. Nino later explains to Bernie that the money from the pawn shop belonged to the East Coast Mafia
Mafia
The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...
. Fearing retaliation if it becomes known who was behind the robbery, Bernie stabs Cook to death and tells Nino to take care of the Driver while he takes care of Shannon. The Driver agrees to give Nino the money in exchange for Irene and Benicio's safety. However, Nino sends a hitman to their apartment building. The Driver and Irene unknowingly ride the elevator with the hitman, but the Driver notices his concealed gun. The Driver gives Irene a quick kiss before overpowering the hitman, dispatching him by repeatedly stomping on his head before a stunned Irene. Bernie finds Shannon attemping to flee town and slits Shannon's wrist in his garage with a straight razor
Straight razor
A straight razor is a razor with a blade that can fold into its handle. They are also called open razors and cut-throat razors.Although straight razors were once the principal method of manual shaving, they have been largely overshadowed by the safety razor, incorporating a disposable blade...
.
The Driver lures Nino to a beach in his car and t-bones
Side collision
Side collisions are vehicle crashes where the side of one or more vehicles is impacted. These crashes often occur at intersections, in parking lots, when two vehicles pass on a multi-lane roadway, or when a vehicle hits a fixed object....
him. With Nino wounded and weakened, the Driver drowns him in the Pacific Ocean
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...
. Bernie calls the Driver, telling him to meet at a Chinese restaurant. The Driver
then makes a final phone call to Irene, to tell her he was leaving and thanking her for her time with him. At the restaurant, Bernie promises Irene and Benicio's safety in exchange for the money, but not the Driver's. In the parking lot, Bernie stabs the Driver in the abdomen as he pulls the money from the trunk of his car. The Driver then stabs and kills Bernie, leaving his corpse on the ground next to the satchel of money. Later that evening, Irene knocks on the Driver's apartment door, but there is no answer. The film ends with the Driver driving through the night.
Cast
- Ryan GoslingRyan GoslingRyan Thomas Gosling is a Canadian actor and musician. He first came to public attention as a child star on the Disney Channel's Mickey Mouse Club and went on to appear in other family entertainment programmes including Are You Afraid of the Dark? , Goosebumps , Breaker High and Young Hercules...
as Driver - Carey MulliganCarey MulliganCarey Hannah Mulligan is an English actress. She made her film debut as Kitty Bennet in Pride & Prejudice . She had roles in numerous British programmes and, in 2007, made her Broadway debut in The Seagull to critical acclaim....
as Irene - Bryan CranstonBryan CranstonBryan Lee Cranston is an American actor, voice actor, writer and director. He is best known for his roles as Hal the father in the Fox situation comedy Malcolm in the Middle, and Walter White in the AMC drama series Breaking Bad, for which he won three consecutive Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama...
as Shannon - Albert BrooksAlbert BrooksAlbert Lawrence Brooks is an American actor, voice actor, writer, comedian and director. He received an Academy Award nomination in 1987 for his role in Broadcast News...
as Bernie Rose - Oscar IsaacOscar Isaac-Personal life:Isaac was born in Guatemala to a Guatemalan mother, Maria Estrada Nicolle, and a Cuban pulmonologist father, Oscar Gonzalo Hernandez. He was raised in Miami, Florida. While in Miami, he played lead guitar and sang vocals for his band "The Blinking Underdogs"...
as Standard Gabriel - Christina HendricksChristina HendricksChristina Rene Hendricks is an actress known for her role as Joan Holloway in the AMC cable television series Mad Men, and as Saffron in Fox's short-lived series Firefly. Hendricks was named "the sexiest woman in the world" in 2010 in a poll of female readers taken by Esquire magazine.-Personal...
as Blanche - Ron PerlmanRon PerlmanRonald N. "Ron" Perlman is an American television, film and voice over actor. He is known for having played Vincent in the TV series Beauty and the Beast , a Deathstroke figure known as Slade in the animated series Teen Titans, Clarence "Clay" Morrow in Sons of Anarchy, the comic book character...
as Nino - Kaden Leos as Benicio
- Jeff Wolfe as Tan Suit
- James BiberiJames BiberiJames Biberi is an Albanian American actor. He was born in Albania.-Filmography:Biberi also provided the voice for the Police in the 2005 video game The Warriors.-External links:...
as Cook - Russ TamblynRuss TamblynRussell Irving "Russ" Tamblyn is an American film and television actor, who is arguably best known for his performance in the 1961 movie musical West Side Story as Riff, the leader of the Jets gang....
as Doc
Development
The novel Drive by James Sallis was published in 2005. Producers Marc E. PlattMarc E. Platt
Marc E. Platt , also credited as Marc Platt, is an American film, television and theatre producer.-Life and career:Platt was raised in Pikesville, Maryland. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1979. He was an avid member of the Penn Glee Club during his time at the university...
and Adam Siegel of Marc Platt Productions optioned the novel after Siegel read a review of it in Publisher's Weekly. The Driver intrigued Siegel because he was "the kind of character you rarely see anymore - he was a man with a purpose; he was very good at one thing and made no apologies for it." The character interested Platt because he reminded him of movie heroes he looked up to as a child, characters typically portrayed by Steve McQueen
Steve McQueen
Terrence Steven "Steve" McQueen was an American movie actor. He was nicknamed "The King of Cool." His "anti-hero" persona, which he developed at the height of the Vietnam counterculture, made him one of the top box-office draws of the 1960s and 1970s. McQueen received an Academy Award nomination...
or Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood
Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide...
.
Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Hossein Amini
Hossein Amini
Hossein Amini is an Iranian screenwriter who has been working since the 1990s. He was nominated numerous awards for the 1997 film The Wings of the Dove, including an Academy Award for Best Writing – Adapted Screenplay....
adapted the novel for the screen. He felt it was a rare book to receive from a studio because it was short, gloomy and like a poem. Because the novel does not present a linear story but has many flashbacks and jumps around in time, Amini found the adaptation challenging. He felt the non-linear structure made it "a very tricky structure" for a feature film.
A film adaptation of Drive was first announced in early 2008, with Neil Marshall
Neil Marshall
Neil Marshall is an English film director, editor and screenwriter. Marshall began his career in editing and in 2002 directed his first feature film Dog Soldiers, which became a cult film. He followed up with the critically acclaimed horror film The Descent in 2005...
set to direct what was then being described as "an L.A.-set action mystery" that would be a starring vehicle for Hugh Jackman
Hugh Jackman
Hugh Michael Jackman is an Australian actor and producer who is involved in film, musical theatre, and television.Jackman has won international recognition for his roles in major films, notably as action/superhero, period and romance characters...
. Universal Studios
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....
, who had been trying to make a film version for years, was also onboard. By February 2010, Marshall and Jackman were no longer attached to the project, and Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn was set to direct with Ryan Gosling
Ryan Gosling
Ryan Thomas Gosling is a Canadian actor and musician. He first came to public attention as a child star on the Disney Channel's Mickey Mouse Club and went on to appear in other family entertainment programmes including Are You Afraid of the Dark? , Goosebumps , Breaker High and Young Hercules...
in the leading role. When Ryan Gosling signed on, he was allowed to choose the director. A fan of his work, the actor chose Refn. When Refn read the first screenplay for Drive, he was more intrigued by the concept of a man having a split personality, being a stuntman by day and a getaway driver at night, than the story itself.
Casting
Drives producer Marc E. Platt contacted Gosling about the film. He explained, “I have this list that I’ve created of very talented individuals whose work inspire me – writers, directors, actors whom I have to work with before I go onto another career or do something else with my life." Near the top of that list was Ryan Gosling. Platt heard back from Gosling around 48 hours later. Gosling was attracted to the script because it had a "very strong character" at its core as well as a powerful love story. The actor had always been interested in doing an action-type movie, but often found today's films to focus more on the stunts than on its characters. He was able to choose the director, which was a first for the actor. "And I thought 'It had to be Nicolas.' There was no other choice," he says. However, Gosling was unsure if Refn would do the project as it was not like anything he had ever done before.When it came to selecting other cast members, Refn did not cast actors based on casting tapes or auditions. Instead, he required they meet him in person at his house. Carey Mulligan
Carey Mulligan
Carey Hannah Mulligan is an English actress. She made her film debut as Kitty Bennet in Pride & Prejudice . She had roles in numerous British programmes and, in 2007, made her Broadway debut in The Seagull to critical acclaim....
was in negotiations to star in Drive in August 2010, and she was cast soon after as a Los Angeles-born Anglo mother raising her 7-year-old Latino child. She was interested in working with Refn because she was a fan of his films Bronson
Bronson (film)
Bronson is a 2008 British fictionalised biographical crime film directed by Nicolas Winding Refn and starring Tom Hardy. The film follows the life of notorious prisoner Michael Gordon Peterson, who was re-named Charles Bronson by his fight promoter...
and Valhalla Rising
Valhalla Rising (film)
Valhalla Rising is a 2009 English-language film directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, starring Mads Mikkelsen. The film takes place in 1000 AD and follows a Norse warrior named One-Eye and a boy named Are as they travel with a band of Christian Crusaders in pursuit of a Crusade. Instead, they find...
. The role was originally written as a Latina woman in her late 20s. Refn made script adjustments to accommodate Mulligan in the role. The filmmaker had not seen any of Mulligan's movies, but upon first seeing her, he recalled, "I knew we had our 'Irene'". He felt her casting would cement the love story in a more engaging way. "It made it more of a Romeo & Juliet kind of love story without the politics that would in this day and age be brought into it if you had different nationalities or different religions," Refn explained.
Bryan Cranston
Bryan Cranston
Bryan Lee Cranston is an American actor, voice actor, writer and director. He is best known for his roles as Hal the father in the Fox situation comedy Malcolm in the Middle, and Walter White in the AMC drama series Breaking Bad, for which he won three consecutive Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama...
plays the role of Shannon. A fan of Breaking Bad, he was one of the first actors Refn looked to cast. Knowing the actor had other opportunities, the director tried to interest him by asking how he would like to develop the role. After not hearing back, Refn called him, at the very same time that Cranston was writing on a piece of paper the pros and cons of doing Drive. Moved by Refn's interest, he accepted the part. Christina Hendricks
Christina Hendricks
Christina Rene Hendricks is an actress known for her role as Joan Holloway in the AMC cable television series Mad Men, and as Saffron in Fox's short-lived series Firefly. Hendricks was named "the sexiest woman in the world" in 2010 in a poll of female readers taken by Esquire magazine.-Personal...
plays the small but important role of Blanche. "Trying to work in a more reality arena for a character like that," Refn originally auditioned porn stars for Blanche. However, he was unable to find anyone who was good enough acting-wise. After meeting with Hendricks, he decided to cast her, feeling her "powerhouse" persona would click with the character.
Albert Brooks
Albert Brooks
Albert Lawrence Brooks is an American actor, voice actor, writer, comedian and director. He received an Academy Award nomination in 1987 for his role in Broadcast News...
plays the foul-mouthed, morose Bernie Rose. When Refn suggested him, Gosling agreed but thought the actor would not be up for playing a character who is violent and sullen, or for appearing in a film that he did not work on himself. Brooks accepted the role to go against typecasting
Typecasting (acting)
In TV, film, and theatre, typecasting is the process by which a particular actor becomes strongly identified with a specific character; one or more particular roles; or, characters having the same traits or coming from the same social or ethnic groups...
and because he loved that Bernie was not a cliché. "There are six people you could always get to play this kind of part, and I like that the director was thinking outside of the box. For me, it was an opportunity to act outside the box. I liked that this mobster had real style. Also, he doesn’t get up in the morning thinking about killing people. He’s sad about it. Upset about it. It’s a case of, 'Look what you made me do.'"
Nino, a key villain, is portrayed by Ron Perlman
Ron Perlman
Ronald N. "Ron" Perlman is an American television, film and voice over actor. He is known for having played Vincent in the TV series Beauty and the Beast , a Deathstroke figure known as Slade in the animated series Teen Titans, Clarence "Clay" Morrow in Sons of Anarchy, the comic book character...
, one of the last actors to join the cast. Regarding the casting of Perlman, Refn said, "The character of Nino was originally not particularly interesting, so I asked Ron why he wanted to be in my movie when he’s done so many great films. When Ron said, ‘I always wanted to play a Jewish man who wants to be an Italian gangster’, and I asked why, and he said, ‘because that’s what I am – a Jewish boy from New York’, well, that automatically cemented it for me." Oscar Isaac
Oscar Isaac
-Personal life:Isaac was born in Guatemala to a Guatemalan mother, Maria Estrada Nicolle, and a Cuban pulmonologist father, Oscar Gonzalo Hernandez. He was raised in Miami, Florida. While in Miami, he played lead guitar and sang vocals for his band "The Blinking Underdogs"...
portrays a Latino convict named Standard who is married to Irene and is just released from prison a week after Irene meets The Driver. He found the role to be a bit unappealing and chose to turn the archetypal character into something more. He said of the role,
"As soon as I sat down with Nicolas, he explained this universe and world of the story, so we made the character into someone interested in owning a restaurant, someone who made some wrong decisions in his life, ending up in a bad place. By making ‘Standard’ more specific and more interesting, we found that it made the story that more compelling."
Filming and cinematography
The film was made on a production budgetProduction budget
A film production budget determines how much money will be spent on the entire film project. It involves the identification and estimation of cost items for each phase of filmmaking ....
of about $13 million and shot in various parts of Los Angeles, California. Locations were picked by Refn while Gosling drove him around the city at night. Under Refn's request, Los Angeles was picked as the shooting site due to budget concerns. Refn moved into a Los Angeles home and insisted that the cast members and screenwriter Amini move in with him. They would work on the script and film all day, then watch films, edit or drive at night. Refn requested that the editing suite be placed in his home as well. With a shooting script of 81 pages, Refn and Gosling continued to trim down dialog during filming.
Its opening chase scene involving Gosling's character was primarily filmed by Refn within the car's interior. In an interview, Refn revealed the idea for this was to execute a "dive-ration of sharks", which involves never leaving the vehicle during a car chase so that the audience can see what's happening from the character's point of view. Tight on money and time, he shot the scene in two days. With two different set-ups prepared in the car, the director found it difficult to have mobility with the camera, so he would then switch the camera to two additional set-ups nearby. As downtown Los Angeles
Downtown Los Angeles
Downtown Los Angeles is the central business district of Los Angeles, California, United States, located close to the geographic center of the metropolitan area...
had changed for the better, Refn avoided certain areas to preserve the gloomy atmosphere. Additionally, the scene was shot at low-angles with minimal light.
One scene in the film that has no dialog is the elevator sequence, "a series of stunning visuals and graphic imagery that’s a prime example of how the film conveys so many ideas and emotions through images rather than words." For this, he spoke to Gaspar Noé
Gaspar Noé
Gaspar Noé is an Argentine filmmaker and the son of Argentine painter and intellectual Luis Felipe Noé. He graduated from Louis Lumière College and is the visiting professor of film at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland...
and asked him how he did the head-smashing scene in Noé's Irréversible
Irréversible
Irréversible is a 2002 French drama film written and directed by Gaspar Noé, starring Monica Bellucci, Vincent Cassel and Albert Dupontel. The film employs a non-linear narrative and follows two men as they try to avenge a brutally raped girlfriend...
(2002). Crossing the line from romance to violence, the scene starts off with The Driver and Irene tenderly kissing. What they share is really a goodbye kiss, as he then becomes a "werewolf", violently stomping the hit-man's head in. It is during this scene that Irene begins to see the Driver in a new light.
Car scenes were filmed with a "biscuit rig", a camera car rig developed for the film Seabiscuit
Seabiscuit (film)
Seabiscuit is a 2003 American biographical film based on the best-selling non-fiction book Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand...
(2003), which allowed a precision driver to steer the car, freeing Gosling to concentrate on acting. Consistent with Refn's usual visual style, wide-angle lens
Wide-angle lens
From a design perspective, a wide angle lens is one that projects a substantially larger image circle than would be typical for a standard design lens of the same focal length; this enables either large tilt & shift movements with a view camera, or lenses with wide fields of view.More informally,...
es were heavily used by cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel
Newton Thomas Sigel
Newton Thomas Sigel, ASC is an American cinematographer who mainly works with Bryan Singer. His father, Irving Sigel, was a noted psychologist who worked for the Educational Testing Service.-Filmography:*Latino...
. Handheld camerawork was avoided. Preferring to keep the film more "grounded" and authentic, Refn also avoided use of computer-generated imagery
Computer-generated imagery
Computer-generated imagery is the application of the field of computer graphics or, more specifically, 3D computer graphics to special effects in art, video games, films, television programs, commercials, simulators and simulation generally, and printed media...
(CGI). Unable to afford CGI due to budgeting restrictions also played a factor in this decision. Although many stunt drivers
Stunt double
A stunt double is a type of body double, specifically a skilled replacement used for dangerous film or video sequences, in movies and television , and for other sophisticated stunts...
are credited, Gosling did a number of stunts himself, after completing a stunt driving car crash course. During production, Gosling re-built the 1973 Chevrolet Malibu
Chevrolet Malibu
Malibus and all other Chevelles were completely restyled for 1968 with semi-fastback rooflines on two-door hardtops and wheelbases split to on two-door models and 118 for four-door sedans and station wagons. Engine offerings included a new V8 rated at that replaced the V8 that had served as the...
used in the film, taking it apart and putting it back together. Filming concluded in November 2010.
Beth Mickle was hired as Drives production designer
Production designer
In film and television, a production designer is the person responsible for the overall look of a filmed event such as films, TV programs, music videos or adverts. Production designers have one of the key creative roles in the creation of motion pictures and television. Working directly with the...
on Gosling recommendation after working together on 2006's Half Nelson
Half Nelson (film)
Half Nelson is a 2006 American drama film directed by Ryan Fleck and written by Anna Boden and Fleck; it stars Ryan Gosling, Shareeka Epps and Anthony Mackie. The film was scored by Juno Award winning Canadian band - Broken Social Scene. Gosling received an Academy Award nomination for lead actor...
. Prior to filming, Mickle supervised a crew of 40, routinely working 16-to-18-hour days. Her most expensive film to date, Mickle felt freer since, unlike Half Nelson, "there was another zero added to the budget." They built Gosling's character's apartment building, which included a hallway and elevator that linked his unit to Irene's. Mickle also made a strip club and re-created Brooks' character's apartment in an abandoned building. Turning a "run-of-the-mill" Los Angeles auto body shop
Automobile repair shop
An automobile repair shop is a place where automobiles are repaired by auto mechanics and electricians.- Types :The automotive garage can be divided in so many category....
into a grandiose dealership was one of the most challenging. Painting the walls an electric blue color, she brought in a showroom full of vintage cars.
Using an Arri Alexa camera, the film was shot digitally
Digital cinematography
Digital cinematography is the process of capturing motion pictures as digital images, rather than on film. Digital capture may occur on video tape, hard disks, flash memory, or other media which can record digital data. As digital technology has improved, this practice has become increasingly common...
. According to Drives executive producer Lancaster, the film contains abundant, evocative, intense images of Los Angeles that are not often seen. "From the little seen back streets of downtown LA to the dry arid outposts on the peaks of the desert landscape surrounding it, Siegel has re-imagined an LA all the way down to the rocky cliffs by the sea." Drab background settings include the Southern California commercial strip. As the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
pointed out, whenever gleaming buildings are shown, it is because they are being seen from a far distance. Refn shot those scenes from a helicopter at night in Bunker Hill, Los Angeles.
While Drive is set in the present day, it carries a heavy 1980s atmosphere that is cautiously set from beginning to end and is underlined not only by the vehicles or music
Synthpop
Synthpop is a genre of popular music that first became prominent in the 1980s, in which the synthesizer is the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s and early 1970s by the use of synthesizers in progressive rock, electronic art rock, disco and particularly the "Kraut rock" of...
and clothes, but also by its architecture. The parts of the city seen in the Valley and by downtown Los Angeles are actually cheap stucco
Stucco
Stucco or render is a material made of an aggregate, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as decorative coating for walls and ceilings and as a sculptural and artistic material in architecture...
and mirrored glass, which has been carefully edited to leave out mostly any obviously new buildings.
Style and inspiration
Journalists and reviewers have called Drive a "classic Los Angeles heist-gone-wrong story" that is a "tribute to the genre of car films" in the vein of movies like BullittBullitt
Bullitt is a 1968 American police procedural film starring Steve McQueen, Jacqueline Bisset and Robert Vaughn. It was directed by Peter Yates and distributed by Warner Bros. The story was adapted for the screen by Alan Trustman and Harry Kleiner, based on the 1963 novel Mute Witness by Robert L....
(1968). A character study, themes Drive examines consist of "loyalty, loneliness and the dark impulses that rise up even when we try our hardest to suppress them." It combines comic gore, film noir
Film noir
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
and B-movie
B-movie
A B movie is a low-budget commercial motion picture that is not definitively an arthouse or pornographic film. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified a film intended for distribution as the less-publicized, bottom half of a double feature....
aesthetics, and Hollywood spectacle, resulting in "a bizarre concoction...reminiscent of David Lynch
David Lynch
David Keith Lynch is an American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor. Known for his surrealist films, he has developed his own unique cinematic style, which has been dubbed "Lynchian", and which is characterized by its dream imagery and meticulous sound...
's Mulholland Drive
Mulholland Drive (film)
Mulholland Drive is a 2001 American neo-noir psychological thriller written and directed by David Lynch, starring Justin Theroux, Naomi Watts, and Laura Harring. The surrealist film was highly acclaimed by many critics and earned Lynch the Prix de la mise en scène at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival...
...Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with films employing nonlinear storylines and the aestheticization of violence...
's Pulp Fiction
Pulp Fiction (film)
Pulp Fiction is a 1994 American crime film directed by Quentin Tarantino, who co-wrote its screenplay with Roger Avary. The film is known for its rich, eclectic dialogue, ironic mix of humor and violence, nonlinear storyline, and host of cinematic allusions and pop culture references...
, and [with] angst-laden love scenes that would not be out of place in a Scandinavian drama". Other comparisons have been to the works of Walter Hill, John Carpenter
John Carpenter
John Howard Carpenter is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, editor, composer, and occasional actor. Although Carpenter has worked in numerous film genres in his four-decade career, his name is most commonly associated with horror and science fiction.- Early life :Carpenter was born...
, Michael Mann, Nathanael West
Nathanael West
Nathanael West was a US author, screenwriter and satirist.- Early life :...
, J.G. Ballard and Mike Davis
Mike Davis (scholar)
Mike Davis is an American Marxist social commentator, urban theorist, historian, and political activist. He is best known for his investigations of power and social class in his native Southern California.-Life:...
. According to Refn, Drive is dedicated to filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky
Alejandro Jodorowsky
Alejandro Jodorowsky Prullansky, known as Alejandro Jodorowsky, is a Chilean filmmaker, playwright, actor, author, comic book writer and spiritual guru...
and includes some of Jodorowsky's existentialism.
Drive has been called a tough, hard-edged neo-noir
Neo-noir
Neo-noir is a style often seen in modern motion pictures and other forms that prominently utilize elements of film noir, but with updated themes, content, style, visual elements or media that were absent in films noir of the 1940s and 1950s.-History:The term Film Noir was coined by...
art house feature, extremely violent and very stylish, with European art and grindhouse
Grindhouse
A grindhouse is an American term for a theater that mainly shows exploitation films. It is named after the defunct burlesque theaters located on 42nd Street in New York City, where 'bump n' grind' dancing and striptease were featured.- History :...
influences. According to Refn, Drive turns into a superhero film
Superhero film
A superhero film, superhero movie, or superhero motion picture is: action, fantasy and science fiction film; that is focused on the actions of one or more superheroes, individuals who usually possess superhuman abilities relative to a normal person and are dedicated to protecting the public...
during the elevator scene because that is when The Driver kills the reprobates. Drive also references 1970s and 1980s cult hits
Cult following
A cult following is a group of fans who are highly dedicated to a specific area of pop culture. A film, book, band, or video game, among other things, will be said to have a cult following when it has a small but very passionate fan base...
such as The Day of the Locust
The Day of the Locust (film)
The Day of the Locust is a 1975 American drama film directed by John Schlesinger. The screenplay by Waldo Salt is based on the 1939 novel of the same title by Nathanael West...
(1975) and To Live and Die in L.A. (1985). Other influences can be seen in the neon-bright opening credits and the retro song picks – "a mix of tension-ratcheting synthesizer tones and catchy club
Nightclub
A nightclub is an entertainment venue which usually operates late into the night...
anthems that collectively give the film its consistent tone." Drives title sequence
Title sequence
A Title Sequence is the method by which cinematic films or television programs present their title, key production and cast members, or both, utilizing conceptual visuals and sound...
is hot-pink, which was inspired by 1983's Risky Business
Risky Business
Risky Business is a 1983 American teen comedy-drama film written by Paul Brickman in his directorial debut. It stars Tom Cruise and Rebecca De Mornay. The hit film launched Cruise to stardom.-Plot:...
editing table.
Refn's main inspiration for Drive came from Grimm's Fairy Tales
Grimm's Fairy Tales
Children's and Household Tales is a collection of German origin fairy tales first published in 1812 by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, the Brothers Grimm. The collection is commonly known today as Grimms' Fairy Tales .-Composition:...
, and his goal was to make a movie that was structured like a fairy tale: condensed in its storytelling and with archetypal characters. Refn sees The Driver as a knight who roams around the countryside searching for people to save. To play with the common theme of fairytales, The Driver protects what is good while at the same time killing degenerate people in violent ways. Refn was also inspired by films such as Point Blank (1969), Two-Lane Blacktop
Two-Lane Blacktop
Two-Lane Blacktop is a 1971 road movie directed by Monte Hellman, starring singer-songwriter James Taylor, Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson, Warren Oates, and Laurie Bird. Esquire magazine declared the film its movie of the year for 1971, and even published the entire screenplay in its April, 1971...
(1971), and The Driver
The Driver
The Driver is a 1978 crime film directed by Walter Hill and starring Ryan O'Neal, Bruce Dern, and Isabelle Adjani. Based upon similarities in plot elements, it is heavily influenced by Jean-Pierre Melville's film Le Samouraï...
(1978). Jean-Pierre Melville’s crime productions influenced the cinematography
Cinematography
Cinematography is the making of lighting and camera choices when recording photographic images for cinema. It is closely related to the art of still photography...
. Amini's script propensity imposes "a kind of sideways moral code," where even those who comply with it are almost never rewarded for their efforts, as seen when The Driver helps Shannon with Irene and her son's best interests in mind. Within their vehicle's, the characters not only make escapes or commit murder, but try to obtain peace and search for romance.
The film's main character, The Driver, has been compared to the Man With No Name, a character Clint Eastwood portrayed in the Sergio Leone
Sergio Leone
Sergio Leone was an Italian film director, producer and screenwriter most associated with the "Spaghetti Western" genre.Leone's film-making style includes juxtaposing extreme close-up shots with lengthy long shots...
westerns, because he almost never speaks and communicates mostly non-verbally. The Driver's meager dialogue is not designed to present him as tough, but to soften him. Refn chose to give The Driver very little dialogue and instead have him drive around listening to pop music
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
, taking control when it counts. One reviewer noted that what The Driver lacks in psychology, he makes up through action and stylish costuming. The Driver's wardrobe was inspired by the band KISS
KISS (band)
Kiss is an American rock band formed in New York City in January 1973. Well-known for its members' face paint and flamboyant stage outfits, the group rose to prominence in the mid to late 1970s on the basis of their elaborate live performances, which featured fire breathing, blood spitting,...
and Kenneth Anger
Kenneth Anger
Kenneth Anger is an American underground experimental filmmaker, occasional actor and author...
's 1964 experimental film
Experimental film
Experimental film or experimental cinema is a type of cinema. Experimental film is an artistic practice relieving both of visual arts and cinema. Its origins can be found in European avant-garde movements of the twenties. Experimental cinema has built its history through the texts of theoreticians...
Scorpio Rising
Scorpio Rising (film)
Scorpio Rising is a 1964 experimental film by Kenneth Anger, starring Bruce Byron as Scorpio. Themes central to the film include the occult, biker subculture, Catholicism and Nazism; the film also explores the worship of rebel icons of the era, namely James Dean and Marlon Brando...
. He wears a satin jacket with a logo of a golden scorpion
Scorpion
Scorpions are predatory arthropod animals of the order Scorpiones within the class Arachnida. They have eight legs and are easily recognized by the pair of grasping claws and the narrow, segmented tail, often carried in a characteristic forward curve over the back, ending with a venomous stinger...
; Refn sees the former as the character's armor and the logo a sign of protection. According to reviewer Peter Canavese, the jacket is a reference to the fable
Fable
A fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized , and that illustrates a moral lesson , which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim.A fable differs from...
of the scorpion and the frog
The Scorpion and the Frog
The Scorpion and the Frog is a fable about a scorpion asking a frog to carry him across a river. The frog is afraid of being stung during the trip, but the scorpion argues that if it stung the frog, the frog would sink and the scorpion would drown. The frog agrees and begins carrying the...
, mentioned in the movie, which in turn evokes the use of the fable in the Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
film Mr. Arkadin
Mr. Arkadin
Mr. Arkadin is a French-Spanish-Swiss coproduction film, written and directed by Orson Welles and shot in several Spanish locations, including Segovia, Valladolid and Madrid.Its history is convoluted...
.
Music and soundtrack
Most of its ethereal electronicElectronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
-pop score was composed by Cliff Martinez
Cliff Martinez
Cliff Martinez is an American film score composer and former drummer.-Biography:Cliff Martinez was born in the Bronx, New York. Raised in Columbus, Ohio, his first job composing was for the popular television show Pee Wee's Playhouse...
, whose ambient work on the sex, lies, and videotape
Sex, lies, and videotape
Sex, Lies, and Videotape is a 1989 independent film that brought director Steven Soderbergh to prominence. It tells the story of a man who films women discussing their sexuality, and his impact on the relationship of a troubled married couple....
soundtrack Refn was a particular fan of. The score contains tracks with vintage keyboards and bluntly descriptive titles. Refn wanted electronic music for the film and to have the music occasionally be abstract so viewers can see things from The Driver's perspective. He gave composer Martinez a sampling of songs he liked and asked Martinez to emulate the sound, resulting in "a kind of retro
Retro
Retro is a culturally outdated or aged style, trend, mode, or fashion, from the overall postmodern past, that has since that time become functionally or superficially the norm once again. The use of "retro" style iconography and imagery interjected into post-modern art, advertising, mass media, etc...
, 80ish, synthesizer
Synthesizer
A synthesizer is an electronic instrument capable of producing sounds by generating electrical signals of different frequencies. These electrical signals are played through a loudspeaker or set of headphones...
europop
Europop
Europop refers to a style of pop music that first developed in today's form in Europe, throughout the late 1970s. Europop topped the charts throughout the 1980s and ’90s...
". Editor Matt Newman suggested Drives opening credits song"Nightcall
Nightcall
"Nightcall" is a song by French electro house artist Kavinsky released in 2010. It was produced by Daft Punk's Guy-Manuel De Homem-Christo and mixed by electronic artist SebastiAn. It features Brazilian lead singer of CSS, Lovefoxxx, on vocals and includes remixes by Dustin N'Guyen, Jackson and his...
" by French electronic musician Kavinsky
Kavinsky
Kavinsky is a French electro house artist, and has released three EPs on the Record Makers label: Teddy Boy in 2006, 1986 a year later and "Nightcall" in 2010. He has been remixed by SebastiAn and others. He toured alongside Daft Punk, The Rapture, Justice, and SebastiAn in 2007...
and featuring Lovefoxxx
Lovefoxxx
Luísa Hanae Matsushita , better known by her stage name Lovefoxxx, is the Brazilian lead singer of indie-electro band Cansei de Ser Sexy.-Biography:...
.
As Refn was going through mixer Johnny Jewel's catalog, he picked out "Under Your Spell" and "A Real Hero" because he thought of Drive being a fairytale. During Drives climax, "A Real Hero"'s keynote melody, about becoming "a real human being, and a real hero", refrains because that is when The Driver changes into both those status'. At first, Jewel worried that the latter might be too literal but soon realized it is used in Drive "in the exact same way that I was feeling it when I wrote it. He definitely got the nuance of the song, and understood what it was supposed to mean, and he wanted to give that emotion to the viewer, that same feeling."
Thinking of music in terms of basic elements, Jewel would tell the director that for certain scenes, it should not have bass since, as an earth tone, it usually is used for a more emotional or ominous part. Jewel thought the music should be upper register and relaxing for the "dreamlike" scene. To help himself with the writing process and conjure up melodies, the mixer would perform a procedure where he highlighted many phrases from the novel, then printed those words in large font and hung them on his walls or drew pictures during viewings of Drive.
Sold as Drive (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack), it was released in CD format to stores on September 27 2011, by Lakeshore Records
Lakeshore Records
Lakeshore Records is the independent music division of Lakeshore Entertainment . They started out as WILL Records.Will Records were started by Skip Williamson in the early 90s...
. Prior to that however, thanks to viral reviews, such as those found on social networking website Twitter
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
, the soundtrack has sold well on iTunes
ITunes
iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....
climbing as high as number four on the sales charts. So far, the 19 track album has amassed positive reviews. James Verniere of the Boston Herald
Boston Herald
The Boston Herald is a daily newspaper that serves Boston, Massachusetts, United States, and its surrounding area. It was started in 1846 and is one of the oldest daily newspapers in the United States...
gave it an "A" grade, stating "The cool crowd isn’t just watching Drive; they’re listening to it, too... The Drive soundtrack is such an integral part of the experience of the film, once you see it, you can’t imagine the film without it." Allmusic reviewer James Christopher Monger selected opening track "Nightcall", "I Drive", "Hammer" and "Bride of Deluxe" as highlights on it. Digital Spy
Digital Spy
Digital Spy is a British entertainment and media news website. According to Alexa Internet traffic statistics, as of February 2011, Digital Spy is the 93rd most popular website in the United Kingdom, with an overall Alexa ranking of 2,088....
s Mayer Nissim gave it a four out of five star rating, finding it to be as important as the film itself. She stated the album beginning with non-Martinez songs instead of mixing it up for a more enjoyable listening experience cost it a star.
Tracklisting
Release
Originally planned as a blockbusterBlockbuster (entertainment)
Blockbuster, as applied to film or theatre, denotes a very popular or successful production. The entertainment industry use was originally theatrical slang referring to a particularly successful play but is now used primarily by the film industry...
, Drive was eventually re-labeled as an independent film
Independent film
An independent film, or indie film, is a professional film production resulting in a feature film that is produced mostly or completely outside of the major film studio system. In addition to being produced and distributed by independent entertainment companies, independent films are also produced...
. Prior to principal photography
Principal photography
thumb|300px|Film production on location in [[Newark, New Jersey]].Principal photography is the phase of film production in which the movie is filmed, with actors on set and cameras rolling, as distinct from pre-production and post-production....
, Refn went to the 2010 Cannes Film Festival
2010 Cannes Film Festival
The 63rd annual Cannes Film Festival was held from May 12 to May 23, 2010, in Cannes, France. The Cannes Film Festival, hailed as being one of the most recognized and prestigious film festivals worldwide, was founded in 1946. It consists of having films screened in and out of competition during the...
in an effort to sell the rights to Drive and released promotional posters for the film. In November 2010, FilmDistrict acquired North American distribution rights. The owners were so eager to get their hands on Drive, they started negotiating to buy it before seeing any footage, believing it could appeal to people who enjoy a genre movie, as well as the arthouse crowd. The film had a release date of September 16, 2011, in the United States.
The film premiered on May 20, in competition at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival
2011 Cannes Film Festival
The 64th annual Cannes Film Festival was held from May 11 to May 22, 2011. American actor Robert De Niro served as the president of the jury for the main competition and French filmmaker Michel Gondry headed the jury for the short film competition...
. At its first showing to the media, it received abundant praise and received "some of the best responses of the festival", but one positive review said it "can't win, won't win" Cannes's top prize. It was greeted with hoots and howls of joy from the media, with viewers cheering on some of the scenes featuring extreme violence. Drive also received a 15 minute standing ovation
Standing ovation
A standing ovation is a form of applause where members of a seated audience stand up while applauding after extraordinary performances of particularly high acclaim...
from the crowd. Xan Brooks of The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
called the film his guilty pleasure of the 2011 competition, labeling it an enjoyable affair. "Over the past 10 days we've witnessed great art and potent social commentary; the birth of the cosmos and the end of the world. Turns out what we really wanted all along was a scene in which a man gets his head stomped in a lift. They welcome it in like a long-lost relation", he wrote. The festival named Refn best director for Drive.
Drive was also screened at the Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Film Festival
Los Angeles Film Festival
The Los Angeles Film Festival, presented by the Los Angeles Times is an event held annually in June in downtown Los Angeles, California. The Los Angeles Film Festival began as the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival in 1995. The first LAIFF took place over the course of five days in a single...
(LAFF) on June 20 at its gala screenings program. It was among more than 200 feature films, short projects, and music videos, from more than 30 countries, to be shown at the festival. After Red Dog
Red Dog (film)
Red Dog is a 2011 Australian family film directed by Kriv Stenders. The film is based on a true story from the novel Red Dog. At the 2011 Inside Film Awards Red Dog was nominated in nine categories and won seven, including Best Feature Film.-Cast:...
s release date was pushed up by several days, Drive replaced it as the Melbourne International Film Festival
Melbourne International Film Festival
The Melbourne International Film Festival is an acclaimed annual film festival held over three weeks in Melbourne, Australia. It was founded in 1951, making it one of the oldest in the World....
's closing night film. Additionally, the movie was screened during FilmDistrict's studio panel presentation at the San Diego Comic-Con function. A secret screening for Drive was held at London's Empire Big Screen during the middle of August. In September, Drive screened as a special presentation during the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival
2011 Toronto International Film Festival
The 36th annual Toronto International Film Festival, was held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada between September 8 and September 18, 2011.Buenos Aires, Argentina was selected to be showcased for the 2011 City to City programme. The opening film was From the Sky Down, a documentary film about the band...
, alongside another movie starring Gosling, The Ides of March
The Ides of March (film)
The Ides of March is a 2011 American political drama thriller film directed by George Clooney from a screenplay written by Clooney, along with Grant Heslov and Beau Willimon. The film is an adaptation of Willimon's 2008 play Farragut North...
.
Marketing done for Drive suggested it to be a film composed of many action scenes. A Michigan woman named Deming has sued both FilmDistrict and Emagine Theaters located in Novi, Michigan
Novi, Michigan
Novi is a city in Oakland County in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2010 census, the population was 55,224, an increase over the 2000 census count of 47,386. The city is located approximately northwest of the center of Detroit, and northeast of the center of Ann Arbor. The city is located...
in October 2011 due to suffering "damages"
Pain and suffering
Pain and suffering is the legal term for the physical and emotional stress caused from an injury .Some damages that might be under this category would be: aches, temporary and permanent limitations on activity, potential shortening of life, depression or scarring...
, feeling that the previews were misleading. Filing under the Michigan Consumer Protection Act, she stated its distributer marketed Drive as similar to the Fast and the Furious
The Fast and the Furious (film series)
The Fast and the Furious is a series of action films that focuses on street racing and heists. Produced by Universal Studios, the series was established in 2001 with the eponymous first installment, which has since been followed by four sequels, and two short films that tie into the series...
film series, and, in a bait and switch act, gave her a motion picture with little racing. Furthermore, Deming accused Drive of containing antisemitic themes. Deming has asked for the cost of her ticket to be refunded, and later plans to file a class action lawsuit to prevent future false film advertising.
Reviews
Drive has received critical acclaim. Review aggregate Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
reports that 92% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 211 reviews, with an average score of 8.2/10, making the film a "certified Fresh" on the website's rating system. On Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
it has a weighted score of 79/100, based on 40 critics, which it ranks as "Generally favorable reviews". Gosling's and Brooks' performances, as well as Drives aesthetics, were generally the most praised aspects of the film by movie critics. Rolling Stone writer Peter Travers
Peter Travers
Peter Travers is an American film critic, who has written for, in turn, People and Rolling Stone. Travers also hosts a celebrity interview show called Popcorn on ABC News Now and ABCNews.com.-Career:...
considered this film to be the type to evoke polarized reception among its viewers. CinemaScore
CinemaScore
CinemaScore is a market research firm based in Las Vegas. It surveys film audiences to rate their viewing experiences with letter grades, reports the results, and forecasts box office receipts based on the data.-Background:...
polls reflect this sentiment, with audiences grading it with a "C-" average, noting its slow, meditative nature. IMDb audience rankings, however, placed Drive at an average of 8.2 out of a possible 10 while 73% of those polled by Rotten Tomatoes reported to have "liked" the film.
Peter Debruge of Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
praised Drive for standing out from other similarly themed films whose visuals and narration fall flat. However, Debruge expected more driving scenes and found Mulligan to be a misfit for Irene. Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter
The Hollywood Reporter
Formerly a daily trade magazine, The Hollywood Reporter re-launched in late 2010 as a unique hybrid publication serving the entertainment industry and a consumer audience...
called Drive a "tasty, if sketchy, modern noir with car chases and bloody action that should turn the trick for genre-seeking audiences." Noting Drive's "wonderfully assembled" cast, he said Gosling takes on the right behavior for his role, making a bid to enter the ranks of Steve McQueen and Clint Eastwood. In contrast to Debruge, McCarthy found Mulligan to be a charming choice for Irene. Reviewing it for the Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...
, Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
wrote: "The entire film, in fact, seems much more real than the usual action-crime-chase concoctions we've grown tired of. Here is a movie with respect for writing, acting and craft. It has respect for knowledgable moviegoers."
Movieline
Movieline
Movieline is a website, formerly a Los Angeles-based film and entertainment magazine, started in 1985 as a local magazine and went national in 1989. Known for its cult status and popularity among film critics, the magazine eventually was retooled and named Movieline's Hollywood Life. The magazine...
's Stephanie Zacharek thought Drive defined the current standard for motion pictures, and Mike D'Angelo of the The A.V. Club
The A.V. Club
The A.V. Club is an entertainment newspaper and website published by The Onion. Its features include reviews of new films, music, television, books, games and DVDs, as well as interviews and other regular offerings examining both new and classic media and other elements of pop culture. Unlike its...
gave it a "B+" rating, saying he will remember at least half a dozen of the movie's scenes for the rest of his life. Chris Lackner of the Vancouver Sun echoed a comment similar to Zacharek's, finding Drive to be a refreshing different change of pace, avoiding Hollywood's trite film formula routine. Awarding the film a four out five star rating, Orlando Sentinel
Orlando Sentinel
The Orlando Sentinel is the primary newspaper of the Orlando, Florida region. It was founded in 1876. The Sentinel is owned by Tribune Company and is overseen by the Chicago Tribune. As of 2005, the Sentinel’s president and publisher was Kathleen Waltz; she announced her resignation in February 2008...
journalist Roger Moore deemed Drive to be "the quietest car picture ever" and, based on what he had seen with this production, said he was looking forward to future collaborations between the star and director. Jessica Winter of Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
said the scene involving the twofer car crash makes Drive for a moment turn into "a lost entry in the Halloween franchise
Halloween (franchise)
Halloween is an American horror franchise that consists of ten slasher films, novels, and comic books. The franchise focuses on the fictional character of Michael Myers who was committed to a sanitarium as a child for the murder of his older sister, Judith Myers...
Michael Myers Hits the Beach.
Karen Durbin of Elle
Elle (magazine)
Elle is a worldwide magazine of French origin that focuses on women's fashion, beauty, health, and entertainment. Elle is also the world's largest fashion magazine. It was founded by Pierre Lazareff and his wife Hélène Gordon in 1945. The title, in French, means "she".-History:Elle was founded in...
praised the chemistry between Gosling and Mulligan, pointing out that Drive does not conform to typical male-entertainment. She also rebuked Refn for underusing Hendricks. Grading it a "B+", Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
reviewer Lisa Schwarzbaum clashed with Durban's opinion on the former, finding the two to never click. Despite giving Drive a high star rating, The Arizona Republic
The Arizona Republic
The Arizona Republic is a daily newspaper published in Phoenix. Circulated throughout Arizona, it is the state's largest newspaper. Since 2000, it has been owned by the Gannett newspaper chain. It was ranked tenth in US daily newspapers by circulation in 2007.-Early years:The newspaper was founded...
s Randy Cordova criticized how the plot and characters all easily come together: "It's all too neat; someone like John Sayles
John Sayles
John Thomas Sayles is an American independent film director, screenwriter and author.-Early life:Sayles was born in Schenectady, New York, the son of Mary , a teacher, and Donald John Sayles, a school administrator. He was raised Catholic and took to labeling himself "a Catholic atheist"...
(Lone Star
Lone Star (1996 film)
Lone Star is an American mystery film written and directed by John Sayles and set in a small town in Texas. It features Chris Cooper, Elizabeth Peña, Kris Kristofferson and Matthew McConaughey and deals with a sheriff's investigation into who murdered one of his predecessors.-Plot:In this ensemble...
) could have linked these elements in a far more compelling way." Giving Drive four out of five stars, The Guardians Xan Brooks observed the film to be quite "self-consciously retro" with a series "of cool, blank surfaces".
In his polarized analysis of the film, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
columnist A. O. Scott
A. O. Scott
Anthony Oliver Scott, known as A. O. Scott , is an American journalist and critic. He is a chief film critic for The New York Times, along with Manohla Dargis.-Background and education:...
believed its supporting performances saved Drive from tedium. "Drive is somber, slick and earnest, and also a prisoner of its own emptiness, substituting moods for emotions and borrowed style for real audacity. This is not to say that the movie is bad as I have suggested, the skill and polish are hard to dispute but rather that it is, for all its bravado, timid and conventional." Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turran praised several aspects of Drive but overall disliked the violence executed in it. Understanding that the level of violence is not uncommon for a Refn film, he stated that it was overdone, disquieting and "throws you out of the picture, diluting the mood rather than enhancing it."
A negative review came from New York
New York (magazine)
New York is a weekly magazine principally concerned with the life, culture, politics, and style of New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it was brasher and less polite than that magazine, and established itself as a cradle of New...
magazine writer David Edelstein, who referred to the film as "higher trash" and deemed it to be as inane as Conan the Barbarian. Edelstein went on to chide Gosling for his choice to appear in the production and believed most viewers would watch solely for the popularity
Celebrity
A celebrity, also referred to as a celeb in popular culture, is a person who has a prominent profile and commands a great degree of public fascination and influence in day-to-day media...
of Drives actors. Another negative analysis came from the Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
s Michael Phillips. Finding its pre-credit sequence to be one of the year's most gripping openings, he felt Drive goes from compelling in the beginning to "a muddle of ultraviolence, hypocrisy and stylistic preening" by the end. Neil Rosen of NY1
NY1
NY1, New York One, is a 24-hour cable-news television channel focusing on the five boroughs of New York City. In addition to news and weather forecasts, the channel also features human-interest segments such as the "New Yorker of the Week" and the "Scholar Athlete of the Week", and specialty...
echoed the latter comment, adding that the violence shown in Drive came off as lackluster.
Box office
Playing at 2,886 locations on about 3,100 screens in the US, Drive made slightly more than $4 million in ticket sales on its opening day. While numerous R-rated action and horror films usually make less on their first Saturday, Drive had a "healthy" 11% increase. It performed lower than FilmDistricit's weekend expectations grossing $11 million and taking third place at the box officeBox office
A box office is a place where tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a countertop, through an unblocked hole through a wall or window, or at a wicket....
, despite being the widest new release. Drive was originally predicted to supersede Contagion
Contagion (film)
Contagion is a 2011 American medical thriller disaster film directed by Steven Soderbergh. The film has an ensemble cast that includes Marion Cotillard, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, and Bryan Cranston. Contagion follows the rapid progress of a lethal...
from second place with a gross of about $12$14 million. Box Office Mojo
Box Office Mojo
Box Office Mojo is a website that tracks box office revenue in a systematic, algorithmic way. Brandon Gray started the site in 1999. In 2002, Gray partnered with Sean Saulsbury and they grew the site to nearly two million readers when, in July 2008, the company was purchased by Amazon.com through...
analyst Brandon Gray felt prior to release that its "hipster
Hipster (contemporary subculture)
Hipsters are a subculture of young, recently settled urban middle class adults and older teenagers with musical interests mainly in alternative rock that appeared in the 1990s...
factor" may alienate audiences like True Romance
True Romance
True Romance is a 1993 American romance crime film written by Quentin Tarantino and directed by Tony Scott. The film stars Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette with an ensemble cast consisting of Christopher Walken, Dennis Hopper, Gary Oldman, Chris Penn, Tom Sizemore, Samuel L. Jackson, Kevin...
(1993), Domino in 2005, and 2007's Eastern Promises and Shoot 'Em Up
Shoot 'em up
Shoot 'em up is a subgenre of shooter video games. In a shoot 'em up, the player controls a lone character, often in a spacecraft or aircraft, shooting large numbers of enemies while dodging their attacks. The genre in turn encompasses various types or subgenres and critics differ on exactly what...
did.
Following the weekend results, analyst Ray Subers, from the same publication, said that this film's commercial performance is yet another "example of how endless Internet hype is rarely a strong indicator of mainstream appeal
Mainstream
Mainstream is, generally, the common current thought of the majority. However, the mainstream is far from cohesive; rather the concept is often considered a cultural construct....
." By its second weekend, Drive remained within the top 3 at many theaters, but wound up at 7th place with a 50% drop in revenue. FilmDistrict now plans over the succeeding few weeks in terms of the number of locations to fuse in each market so the per-screen averages for core theaters in "top urban markets" will continue to be high. Currently, the picture has amassed a total of $33,393,586 from US box office and $19,000,000 from international box office.
Accolades
| Award | Date of ceremony | Category | Recipient(s) | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cannes Film Festival Cannes Film Festival The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals... |
May 22, 2011 | Best Director | Nicolas Winding Refn | |
| Independent Spirit Awards Independent Spirit Awards The Independent Spirit Awards , founded in 1984, are awards dedicated to independent filmmakers. Winners were typically presented with acrylic glass pyramids containing suspended shoestrings representing the paltry budgets of independent films. In 1986, the event was renamed the Independent Spirit... |
2012 | Best Feature Independent Spirit Award for Best Film The Independent Spirit Award for Best Film is one of the annual Independent Spirit Awards.-1980s:* 1985: After Hours - Martin Scorsese** Blood Simple - Joel and Ethan Coen** Smooth Talk... |
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| Best Director Independent Spirit Award for Best Director The Film Independent's Spirit Award for Best Director is one of the annual Independent Spirit Awards.- 1980s :* 1985: Joel Coen – Blood Simple** Martin Scorsese – After Hours** Joyce Chopra – Smooth Talk... |
Nicolas Winding Refn | |||
| Best Male Lead | Ryan Gosling Ryan Gosling Ryan Thomas Gosling is a Canadian actor and musician. He first came to public attention as a child star on the Disney Channel's Mickey Mouse Club and went on to appear in other family entertainment programmes including Are You Afraid of the Dark? , Goosebumps , Breaker High and Young Hercules... |
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| Best Supporting Male | Albert Brooks Albert Brooks Albert Lawrence Brooks is an American actor, voice actor, writer, comedian and director. He received an Academy Award nomination in 1987 for his role in Broadcast News... |
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| New York Film Critics Circle Awards New York Film Critics Circle Awards New York Film Critics' Circle Awards are given annually to honor excellence in cinema worldwide by an organization of film reviewers from New York City-based publications. It is considered one of the most important precursors to the Academy Awards.... |
2012 | Best Supporting Actor New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor The New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor is an award given by the New York Film Critics Circle, honoring the finest achievements in filmmaking.This awards is given since 1969.- 1960s :- 1970s :- 1980s :- 1990s :- 2000s :... |
Albert Brooks |