She’s a plain Jane, but with Driver (Ryan Gosling) behind the wheel, this Chevy Impala’s gonna fly!
That’s what his boss, (Bryan Breaking Bad Cranston) says. And Driver knows all the backstreets just like a taxi driver only better because he knows how to outsmart the cops when it comes to driving the getaway car after a stickup. But that’s at nighttime. His day job is a stunt car driver.
The film open to a full ten minutes of the most tension driven moments without any one person uttering a word of
dialog. A man of few words, Gosling does an incredible job capturing a tortured character with sole facial expressions and intense yet calming energy. And he doesn’t sweat….whether he’s pulverizing someone to death or pining for the girl-next-door (literally) named Irene (Carey Mulligan wearing really bad little hair clips). But we like this silent killer, and we want him to do what he has to do, because he’s been roped into a little more than he bargained for since falling for this angelic single mother of a five year old boy. Perhaps Driver should have quit at carrying her groceries in. Those bags of waffles and chocolate milk are about to define his entire life.
Irene comes with an ex con husband (Oscar Isaac) and Driver comes with a boss (Albert Brooks). Brooks pulls off an unexpected we-didn’t-know-you-had-it-in-ya performance as a middle-aged guy with bad loud hair and louder Tommy Bahama shirts. This is a moody little film with precision detail, minimum dialog, except when required, and very violent. Oddly it’s typical Hollywood genre of flipping cars and all that action, but this one takes a plot on a really original spin. It reaches a stunning conclusion and let’s just say Gosling ain’t going down easy. Three tiaras