Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
One of my favorite movies from the last decade. I just watched it for the fourth or fifth time, and I still marvel at it.
The basic story elements are straight out of the mythical Western movies of Sergio Leone: a quiet man with no name and a particular skill set is not bothered by committing acts outside of the law. However, he does have a certain code of honor to which he holds himself. When he sees the forces of darkness closing in, he decides to use his skills to fight back. In the case of director Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive, instead of a gunfighter, we have "Driver" (Ryan Gosling), who is a movie stunt driver moonlighting as a getaway "wheel man" for robbers. When Driver (his real name is never given) falls in love with his neighbor, Irene (Carey Mulligan), he starts to show a tenderness unseen to us before. This nearly all vanishes, however, when Irene's husband is first paroled out of prison but then forced into committing a robbery that goes horribly wrong. Driver then finds himself in a race to track down the gangsters responsible, while keeping Irene and her little boy safe.
While Drive is not telling a story that is particularly fresh, it updates the "quiet, lone hero" tale wonderfully and tells it with such cinematic excellence that it shames other movies that have tried the same thing since Leone first mastered it in the mid-1960s. Admittedly, it helps if one has a certain affinity for this type of protagonist. I've long been a fan of Leone and Clint Eastwood's (we can technically throw Charles Bronson in there, too) Man With No Name character. I'm far from the only boy in the history of humanity who's been fascinated by the fantasy of the ever-cool and unflappable hero who is so skilled that he can take down any adversary, often without breaking much of a sweat. Ryan Gosling's Driver is cut from that same cloth, though he's traded in Eastwood's dusty serape for a slick, silver driving jacket with a badass scorpion on the back.
I know, I know. If you haven't seen the movie, you're thinking, "Come on. A silent, badass loner wearing a scorpion jacket? This is a joke, right?" No. It's not. By a lesser filmmaker, it would be laughable, to be sure. But this screenplay and direction are so tight that it's brilliant. The narrative is a case-study in cinematic efficiency, with nary a wasted scene or throwaway line to be found in the entire film. And while there is certainly plenty of intense action and violence in the latter parts of the movie, much of the earlier segments feature delicate and subtle visual cues to tell the story. These subtleties are what make the action sequences in the third act of the movie so much more impactful.
I've spoken to a few friends who have watched the movie and simply found it too slow, quiet, and brooding for their liking. I understand this. If one prefers their action to be highly kinetic and offer strings of one-liners to bridge the action scenes, a la the Fast and the Furious franchise, then Drive is not the movie for you. In place of those styles of storytelling, Drive offers stunningly framed and lit scenes, expert editing, a meditative tone, and pitch-perfect acting (the supporting cast is amazing) to tell a story that is both classic and unique. There aren't many non-popcorn movies that I watch every year or two, but this quickly became one of them. After this most recent viewing, this is not at all likely to change.
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| This great throwback poster gives some idea of the tone of the movie. Think of it as a more comedic, profane version of Lethal Weapon. |
Director: Paul Feig
A bit of a forerunner for the even-better, modern comedy classic Spy, The Heat is a hilarious early team-up of comedy director Paul Feig and brilliant comedienne Melissa McCarthy.
The movie pairs stuffy, arrogant F.B.I. Agent Ashburn (Sandra Bullock) with local hardass Boston police officer Mullins (McCarthy) as they try to track down a high-volume drug dealer responsible for several grizzly deaths in recent months. Ashburn is a well-educated and capable but highly abrasive, career-driven woman who has alienated virtually every coworker in the Bureau. Mullins, on quite the other hand, is Ashburn's polar opposite in nearly every way. While she is equally effective at tracking and capturing criminals, her approach is far less surgical and much more that of a wrecking ball, speaking to her background as the eldest sister in her Irish, working class family. Mullins is supremely crass and on a hair trigger at all times. She and Ashburn eventually bridge the tremendous gap between their styles of law enforcement and work together to solve the case.
Anyone who has seen and enjoyed either Bridesmaids or Spy would do well to check out The Heat. Director Paul Feig has found his modern comedy movie niche with the formula evidenced in these movies (though Spy was impressively less formulaic than the other two): use a known story blueprint, hire several supremely hilarious actors, and let them run with their lines and characters. That is truly where the strength of these movies lie. When you give someone like McCarthy a few decent lines or a dynamic character to work with, along with R-rated freedom, she'll either deliver the written line with perfect timing and tone, or she'll punch it up into something even better. And not to slight Sandra Bullock here, who does a great job as the straight woman, but it's McCarthy's attitude and comic chops that set the tone here. It also helps to have some other veteran comic actors like Bill Burr and Michael Rappaport as supporting characters, just so no single voice or pair of voices dominate for too long.
Like nearly every Paul Feig movie I've seen, The Heat is probably about 10 to 15 minutes too long, due to overly generous editing. It's fairly clear that much of Feig's approach is to grant his actors a ton of freedom to ad-lib as much as they desire. This is as it should be, as it clearly leads to plenty of hilarious moments of spontaneous dialogue and reactions. However, every film of his contains at least a few scenes that feel a tad too long or simply superfluous, bogging down the narrative pace just a bit. Fortunately, they've never been a complete drag on his movies, and The Heat is the same.
I was glad to learn that shortly after I watched this movie, a sequel was announced. The trio of Feig, McCarthy, and Bullock was obviously a strong one, and there are plenty more tales of Ashburn and Mullins that would be fun to tell. I'll look forward to it.
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