DetroitStyle
Club Member
Drive was one of the worst movies I've seen in a long time.
*********WARNING SPOILERS!!!!!********
Where do I begin? How about the fact that it's called DRIVE and there's one (albeit fantastic) driving scene that last 90 seconds. The opening scene hardly qualifies as a "driving scene"
Next? OK, right from the beginning, it's clear to me that this director FUCKING LOVES the movie HEAT. Which is not a bad thing. I love the movie Heat. Heat is slow, Heat builds tension, Heat develops characters. Drive tries to do all of these things and fails on all fronts. What it does do, is try to bite off a few great things about Heat.
1. The helicopter/night shots of L.A. Once is great. Twice is OK. But holy fuck there must have been 30 of them.
2. Driving in silence. At night. Past neon signs. I will agree that they were well filmed and lit... but again, overdone overdone overdone. Just too much of it. There are more minutes on screen devoted to showing The Driver's gauges than there are devoted to fucking DIALOGUE.
3. Prolonged silences... delayed responses. I get that they are trying to make The Driver mysterious, but eventually he just comes off looking like a simpleton. He takes 15 seconds to answer everything and then it's a one word answer
Irene: What do you do?
-pause for 5 seconds-
Driver: I drive.
Irene: What, like a limo driver?
-pause 10 seconds
Driver: No, movies
Irene: What, like a stuntman?
-pause for 15 seconds-
Driver: yeah
Irene: Isn't that dangerous?
-pause for 12 seconds
Driver: It's only part time
In the words of the great Monty Python:
I felt like pulling my fucking hair out. And I don't have any hair.
Despite all of the attempts building these characters to seem deep, they aren't. They are shallow. They are boring. The only decent character in the entire thing, was Shannon, played very well by Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad). He's the only character I believed and he reminded me a lot of Pacino in Donnie Brasco. Just a small time guy who's a bit mixed up with gangsters but nobody really respects him... and yet he still tries to do right by everybody, and in the end, he gets done in by trying to help.
The ending didn't leave me feeling anything. There was no drama, it was super obvious what was going to happen (if you didn't see that knife attack coming, you're slow as balls) and I just didn't care.
I WANTED to like this movie. It looked cool. It looked sexy. It had all the right people in it and a great car chase.
But seriously OT. Don't waste your time. This is NOT a good movie and anybody who says it is, is just pretending to like it because somebody said that somebody else heard that somebody else said it was a great movie.
It's the Emperor's New Clothes of movies. It's crap. But for some reason, people seem afraid to call it such.
I'm hoping that by providing you with this review, that I can spare you
1. The excrutiating pain of plodding through this movie's crushingly tedious emptiness while hopelessly waiting for it to get better. I felt like a fish swimming in motoroil. It just got worse and worse as I realized that I was consigned to my fate.
2. The underlying obligation of then pretending to have enjoyed the movie, because they heard in-types and artsy-fartsies saying that they loved it... and thus, out of an underlying lack of self confidence (everybody smart liked it, will I appear stupid if I didn't like it?) proceeding to recommend it to their friends... thus ensnaring more victims
*********WARNING SPOILERS!!!!!********
Where do I begin? How about the fact that it's called DRIVE and there's one (albeit fantastic) driving scene that last 90 seconds. The opening scene hardly qualifies as a "driving scene"
Next? OK, right from the beginning, it's clear to me that this director FUCKING LOVES the movie HEAT. Which is not a bad thing. I love the movie Heat. Heat is slow, Heat builds tension, Heat develops characters. Drive tries to do all of these things and fails on all fronts. What it does do, is try to bite off a few great things about Heat.
1. The helicopter/night shots of L.A. Once is great. Twice is OK. But holy fuck there must have been 30 of them.
2. Driving in silence. At night. Past neon signs. I will agree that they were well filmed and lit... but again, overdone overdone overdone. Just too much of it. There are more minutes on screen devoted to showing The Driver's gauges than there are devoted to fucking DIALOGUE.
3. Prolonged silences... delayed responses. I get that they are trying to make The Driver mysterious, but eventually he just comes off looking like a simpleton. He takes 15 seconds to answer everything and then it's a one word answer
Irene: What do you do?
-pause for 5 seconds-
Driver: I drive.
Irene: What, like a limo driver?
-pause 10 seconds
Driver: No, movies
Irene: What, like a stuntman?
-pause for 15 seconds-
Driver: yeah
Irene: Isn't that dangerous?
-pause for 12 seconds
Driver: It's only part time
In the words of the great Monty Python:
I felt like pulling my fucking hair out. And I don't have any hair.
Despite all of the attempts building these characters to seem deep, they aren't. They are shallow. They are boring. The only decent character in the entire thing, was Shannon, played very well by Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad). He's the only character I believed and he reminded me a lot of Pacino in Donnie Brasco. Just a small time guy who's a bit mixed up with gangsters but nobody really respects him... and yet he still tries to do right by everybody, and in the end, he gets done in by trying to help.
The ending didn't leave me feeling anything. There was no drama, it was super obvious what was going to happen (if you didn't see that knife attack coming, you're slow as balls) and I just didn't care.
I WANTED to like this movie. It looked cool. It looked sexy. It had all the right people in it and a great car chase.
But seriously OT. Don't waste your time. This is NOT a good movie and anybody who says it is, is just pretending to like it because somebody said that somebody else heard that somebody else said it was a great movie.
It's the Emperor's New Clothes of movies. It's crap. But for some reason, people seem afraid to call it such.
I'm hoping that by providing you with this review, that I can spare you
1. The excrutiating pain of plodding through this movie's crushingly tedious emptiness while hopelessly waiting for it to get better. I felt like a fish swimming in motoroil. It just got worse and worse as I realized that I was consigned to my fate.
2. The underlying obligation of then pretending to have enjoyed the movie, because they heard in-types and artsy-fartsies saying that they loved it... and thus, out of an underlying lack of self confidence (everybody smart liked it, will I appear stupid if I didn't like it?) proceeding to recommend it to their friends... thus ensnaring more victims
