Posted 4 months ago
Drive - A Non Review
I finally got to see this on the plane today after wanting to see it for months and the only thing I could think of was “that wasn’t bad, but what is all the hype about?”
Ryan Gosling stares at people uncomfortable for minutes at a time. The camera lingers on his face for entire scenes in which Gosling’s character says NOTHING. This isn’t as strong and artistic as one might think from only hearing the description - in practice it’s very unsettling and feels like I’m watching an art film made by a sixteen year old girl obsessed with Gosling.
There’s no explanation given for why Gosling and Mulligan fall so hard for each other so fast with such minimal interaction besides “I want to touch you and you want to touch me too.”
Gosling’s character doesn’t say anything for the first twenty minutes of the film besides “Yea” or “OK.” And it isn’t cool the way it is to not have any dialogue in WALL-E for the first 30 minutes. It all just came off as very weird. The premise of the film felt like it could have made for a much better story if they’d spent less time on lingering shots of Baby Goose’s beautiful face and instead allowed for some kind of character development so we can see him transform from the cool driver that doesn’t carry a gun to the hell-bent man on a rampage. Instead we’re supposed to buy that the guy has this psychotic inner demon.
Albert Brooks, Bryan Cranston and Ron Perlman give good turns, though Cranston is clearly better because his character isn’t pulled from “Organized-Crime Tropes for the Aspiring Screenwriter Kindle Edition.”
Lastly, I’m tired of Hollywood putting two women in a film and expecting me to agree with the characters on which one is pretty. Someone in this film calls Christina Hendricks ugly. Christina Hendricks…ugly. Granted, they’ve appropriately fugged her up in this film (ewwww no woman can be attractive without a shitload of makeup while wearing flannel!) but still. Anyway, the main takeaway from this movie is that Christina Hendricks > Carey Mulligan regardless of what Hollywood wants you to believe. More leading roles for Hendricks please.