Movie Man: 'Drive' offers smooth, stylish ride and some surprising turns

“Drive” coasts by on a whole lot of style and not much substance, but that’s OK. When a movie is this stylish, I can’t see any reason to complain. I’ll lay out the basic plot, which is very basic indeed: Ryan Gosling plays a guy known only as the Driver, so-called because just about everything he does involves driving. He’s a Hollywood stunt driver by day, a freelance getaway driver by night and, if everything goes according to plan, he’ll be a racing driver with the help of his mechanic buddy Shannon (Bryan Cranston of “Breaking Bad”) and local gangster Bernie Rose (Albert Brooks of movies a lot less violent than this one.) Naturally, though, everything does not go according to plan, and that’s because of a woman. After Gosling meets Irene (Carey Mulligan) in the elevator of his apartment, he feels protective of her. And, as it turns out, she needs some protecting, because she and her son are waiting for her husband (Oscar Isaac) to get out of jail. And — of course — once he’s out of jail, he has a big debt to pay off, and the Driver gets involved, and, well, boy, oh boy, that’s when things really stop going according to plan. It’s not the most original plot of all time (heck, it might be the least original plot of all time), but director Nicolas Winding Refn gives it energy by making “Drive” all about how it feels instead of what’s it’s actually about. The scenes of Gosling driving through the dark streets of Los Angeles accompanied by a very 1980s-sounding score are almost hypnotic, all blacks and blues and pinks slipping past your eyes. Those sequences just about lull you into a trance, which, I’m guessing is just what Refn intended. Because just when you get comfortable, that’s when he tosses some shockingly brutal violence up on the screen. Most movies — especially modern crime movies — get violent right away, in some misguided attempt to keep their audience on edge. But “Drive” bides its time, just like Gosling purring slowly down the back streets, until the moment is right. Then bam! You won’t be ready for the violence, and you definitely won’t forget it. Personally, I think it gives the movie the nervous jolt it needed, but I’d also guess that those bloody moments – especially a particularly nasty one in an elevator — cost the movie some Oscar nominations.影视帝国 tomove.com.cnMAP 台湾综艺节目 综艺节目排行榜 国语动漫