Sunday, February 12, 2012

Drive

Caught Nicolas Winding Refn's latest the other day, after much waiting and hand-wringing. Thought I'd jot down my thoughts, as per local custom.

Drive's script is risky. Reports indicate that Gosling, the star, actually requested his character to have less dialogue than initially appeared in the script and, while this works absolute wonders for the film's pacing, it makes the characterization suffer somewhat. With so little expositional information offered about the protagonist, by the movie's halfway point, where he's revealed to an exceptionally violent character, there's a certain disconnect and I can't, after several days of mulling it over, say that it's necessarily a positive one.

This being said, the movie's pacing is so killer than missed opportunities like this don't occur until hours after watching the film. By drawing dialogue out as drastically as it does, Drive makes every since word count; something difficult to come by in modern scriptwriting. Totally worth viewing and my second favorite script of 2011.* (Plus phenomenal direction and stellar acting too.)

(*For the record, number one is McDonagh's The Guard, two is Drive and three is Farr & Lochhead's Hanna.)

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