Drive

Ryan Gosling in Drive

Story: Driver (RYAN GOSLING) is a stunt driver by day and a getaway driver by night. Doesn’t matter what job he does, Driver is most comfortable behind the wheel of a car.

Review:  At first, I thought it was an action, independent film. But the story was far different from it. The movie was based on a book of the same title by James Sallis. The story is written like you are reading a poem. Veteran producer Marc E. Platt, known for his blockbusters Legally Blonde and Wanted, diverted from Hollywood to produce this art film. Academy Award® nominee and screenwriter Hossein Amini  did the screenplay. He was nominated for The Wings Of A Dove. The whole movie was filmed in a wide angled camera lens which is a trademark of director Nicolas Winding Refn. 

Driver was an intriguing protagonist of the story. Despite that his name wasn't revealed in the duration of the movie, he is not a noble hero and he has two personalities: A professional stunt driver and a getaway driver. Whatever he does, as long as it involves driving. Ryan Gosling plays Driver. Gosling was last seen in the movie, Crazy Stupid Love. Cast includes Carey Mulligan, Albert Brooks, and Ron Perlman(Hellboy, Sons Of Anarchy). Drive opens November 9 exclusively in Ayala Cinemas(Trinoma, Glorietta and Greenbelt).

CAREY MULLIGAN, DRAGGED INTO THE UNDERWORLD IN “DRIVE”

Carey Mulligan in Drive

One of the most talented young actresses working today, Oscar Best Actress nominee Carey Mulligan (“Never Let Me Go,” “Money Never Sleeps”) stars opposite Ryan Gosling in FilmDistrict's critically acclaimed thriller “Drive.”  

Winner of the Best Director prize in this year’s Cannes Film Festival, “Drive” will be shown exclusively at Ayala Malls Cinemas (Glorietta 4, Greenbelt 3 & Trinoma) starting Nov. 9. The film is directed by Nicolas Winding Refn and adapted from James Sallis's 2005 novel of the same name. 

            In the film, Driver (Gosling) is a Los Angeles wheelman for hire, stunt driving for movie productions by day and steering getaway vehicles for armed heists by night. Though a loner by nature, Driver can't help falling in love with his beautiful neighbor Irene (Mulligan), a vulnerable young mother dragged into a dangerous underworld by the return of her ex-convict husband Standard (Oscar Isaac). 

            Mulligan had been a fan of Refn’s past films “Bronson” and “Valhalla Rising” and had even mentioned to her agent that she wanted to work with a director like Refn, but it was only after she expressed interest in the script that she learned who was helming “Drive.” 

The actrees’ enthusiasm was matched by Refn's, who immediately ordered small rewrites of Irene's backstory so he could cast Mulligan. In the novel, ‘Irene’ is a Latina. Director Refn confirms, “Originally I was looking for a Latina actress. He continues, “I hadn’t seen Carey’s films, but the minute she walked in the door, I knew we had our ‘Irene.’ It just cemented the love story in a much more interesting 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.”

Mulligan explains her interest in the part: “Irene's character was a challenge because she's really the pivot point for the film's secondary plot, which is literally about the love triangle between her, Driver and Irene’s husband Standard but dramatically is about where they'll all end up in the most meaningful sense. And it's not an easy decision for her. Driver certainly seems like Irene's knight in shining armor, but Standard is drawn very sympathetically, as someone who's made mistakes but is genuinely trying to turn his life around. Plus she's loved him since she was 17. So to be able to play those two impulses off of one another, especially after Standard and Driver form an uneasy alliance, gave me so much to work with.” 

Says Refn: “Since I was a teenager, I've been a big fan of `Sixteen Candles.’ I've always wanted to remake that film one way or another and, in a very unlikely way, I've done that with `Drive.’ Carey has all the intelligence and charm of a young Molly Ringwald. The romantic scenes she has with Ryan make for a very delicate and beautiful contrast to the brutality in the rest of the film.”

RYAN GOSLING TAKES YOU FOR A SPIN IN “DRIVE”

Ryan Gosling in Drive

Fresh from the commercial and critical success of his first-ever romantic comedy “Crazy, Stupid, Love,” Ryan Gosling now returns to psychological thriller in the Cannes Film Festival winner, “Drive.”

            Winner of the Best Director award at this year's Cannes, “Drive” will be shown soon exclusively at Ayala Malls Cinemas (Glorietta 4, Greenbelt 3 & Trinoma). The film is directed by Nicolas Winding Refn and adapted from James Sallis's 2005 novel of the same name. 

            In the film, Driver (Gosling) is a Los Angeles wheelman for hire, stunt driving for movie productions by day and steering getaway vehicles for armed heists by night. Though a loner by nature, Driver can't help falling in love with his beautiful neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan), a vulnerable young mother dragged into a dangerous underworld by the return of her ex-convict husband Standard (Oscar Isaac). 

            “I was really intrigued by the role of Driver because the performance demanded this very complex dramatic counterpoint,” Gosling explains. “On the one hand, he's really self-contained, really laconic. There's an economy of movement in the way he carries himself, an economy of words in the way he speaks. He keeps his cards close to his chest and there's an almost poker-faced inscrutability to his reactions. All of which ties into his character, because this is the kind of mechanical self-control he achieves in the flow-situation of driving. [Director] Nic kept saying to me, 'The Driver is half-man, half-machine.' 

            “On the other hand,” Gosling continues, “Driver is literally psychotic, you know? A Travis Bickle, Taxi Driver-kind of character. Beneath all of that eerie outward calm, there is this reservoir of raging energy and hair-trigger violence. It's like when you're cruising in an automobile and the ride feels so smooth, so stable, so safe—then another car crosses your path. BAM. All that energy, all that mass-times-velocity momentum, is released in a flash of physical violence. And that's basically the character of Driver. He navigates around most obstacles with some very flawless trick-driving, literally and figuratively escaping without a scratch. But when the moment of impact unexpectedly arrives, it is violent and it physically slams you. The challenge is making the audience feel that tightly-coiled energy when Driver is ticking along as smoothly as a stopwatch.” 

            “Ryan is a real rarity,” says director Nicolas Winding Refn. “He has the charisma and good looks of a leading man and the gravity of a Method-trained, master class performer. For the role of Driver, the film needed an actor who could convey the explosive violence and emotional loneliness of that lone-wolf character, yet also make his personal transformation through love authentic and believable. Few movie stars have that range. Ryan is one of them.”