DRIVE

Cars and violence, what's not to love?

Holy shit! I have a review out that’s not 3 weeks after the release date! And now that we’re over that, let’s talk about Drive.

You’d think a film called Drive - which focuses on a stunt driver who moonlights as a getaway driver, on the run from the mob after a heist gone wrong and out for revenge on those responsible - would be full of action, car chases and a pounding soundtrack that sets out to abuse your senses in the same way a drunk hillbilly beats up his wife. But you couldn’t be further from the truth, and thank fuck for that because it shows that you can actually make a standard genre movie compelling, visually complex, and absolutely beautiful without resorting to the plot hole mind fuck stories like Inception.

Yup...I can predict that you needed a plane so I bought an airline for you...

Drive is a simple film, where less is more, and subtlety is king. It’s a very standard Noir Thriller with a simple story, but Nicolas Winding Refn (most known for Bronson) picked up the Best Director award at Cannes this year for this film, and you don’t get that just for making your standard run of the mill genre film otherwise, heaven forbid, Michael Bay would win the Palme D’Or. And if that happened, I would lose my faith in humanity and smear my rancid shit on the walls of a children’s hospital or something.

What Refn has done is to make a film that is rich and textured visually, audibly and most importantly, thematically. It all seems very 80’s but it is clearly set in the present day. There’s all the tacky neon you could want and even the soundtrack beats that 80’s synth pop we all know and love. Even down to the detail of the pink italicised paintbrush type in the credits. It’s got the aesthetic as if they had actually filmed Grand Theft Auto: Vice City without the 80’s campness. But through all of the visual and audible stylisation, it is the themes and character that stand out and the simplicity of the story has allowed Refn to focus thoroughly on it and create this award winning vision.

That’s not to say this film is without it’s flaws though, there are a couple of gaping plot holes and sometimes Carey Mulligan’s Irene seems a little too helpless. There are clichés and the beginning all seems a bit too saccharine sweet for the kind of Jeckyll and Hyde theme that resonates throughout the film. But these flaws are completely overwhelmed by the intricacy with which this film has been crafted.

However, there is a rather colossal flaw, which I don’t really seem to understand, and that’s the UK age certificate. The film’s been given an 18 rating, which is pretty much a commercial death sentence in this country. With the attendance for 18 rated films at an all time low, all the studios are out to trivialise their violent content into cartoonish drivel so that they get certified 15. This is partly to blame for the desensitisation of our youth, but also means films like Drive won’t get to a larger audience in the cinema because the violence here is too ‘real’. But in the US, this film has a RESTRICTED rating. Which means anyone under 17 can go as long as they are with an adult over 18. This rating is MORE SENSIBLE because not only do the studios get the sales of the tickets, the parents can decide if their 15 or 16 year old kids are fit to see the film themselves. But oh no, we wouldn’t want parents to feel responsible for the little shits they spawn would we? We’d rather just park them in front of the TV and let that raise them instead.

After watching Tellietubbies, junior picked up a hammer and bashed is family's skulls in because they wouldn't make him tubbie toast...

Anyway, I digress…

Drive, above all else, is a Jeckyll and Hyde film. The unnamed driver (played magnificently by Ryan Gosling) is a seemingly kind a gentle person, but just under the surface lays a savage beast that really doesn’t take a lot of coaxing to come out to the fore. This is also reflected in the city of LA. It is saturated, colourful, bright and pretty to look at, but just below the surface is a criminal underbelly with gangs and mobs willing to screw each other over for money. Maybe even, we can see a little bit of the unnamed driver in ourselves. We all pretend to be nice, but actually, maybe we all just want to gouge each others eyes out with the nearest piece of cutlery. 

OH NO, THERE IS A FORK IN MY EYE!

This is what Film Noir should be doing. It reflects the darker side of humanity by showing an audience the protagonists relationship with the city in which they dwell, and their natures very frequently fit hand in hand. This is what makes Drive a true Noir film, and what makes it a bloody fantastic one. The violence is visceral, the driving sequences have made driving sequences exciting again (the opening is one of the most intense things I have ever seen), and just about everything in this film is sublime. Go and watch it, thank me later.

And if that didn't persuade you, perhaps a picture of Bill Murray might.

KILL LIST

Wait...what?

Every once in a while I get introduced to something that completely and utterly confuses me as to what the fuck I am actually watching. Like Deal or No Deal style game shows where the contestant wins money without any sort of skill. If it were up to me, to get that £250’000 the contestant would need to have suffered some sort of emotional and psychological trauma that the money would be needed for therapy afterwards.

...and for the cuddly toy, you have to fight a REAL LIVE PANDA!

Anyway, Kill List is one of those things, but that actually works in its favour. I think…

The film follows Jay, an ex-soldier turned hit man with a middle class family life that is slowly unravelling due to him being out of work for the last 8 months. His previous assignment had gone horribly wrong and it’s still dogging him. However, home pressures and a visit from his friend and partner, Gal, lead him to take on another job - an easy job with plenty of money. Of course, nothing is quite as it seems.

So far, sounds like your fairly average film. After hearing a bit about the hype and not reading too much, I was very unsure of what to actually expect, but figured it was going to be one of those usual British crime films about angry men who go around killing people and being all cheeky-like á la Guy Ritchie. In most instances I’d be right, but I was actually wrong on this one, and when I say wrong, I mean REALLY wrong. I mean wrong in the sense of someone eating dog shit and thinking “now why did I think that would taste like chocolate?” Just because it’s the same colour as chocolate doesn’t mean it actually is.

Chocolate, or shit? What do you think?

OK, so maybe there was SOME chocolate mixed in with the shit, because some of the dialogue actually was a bit cheeky-chappy ‘ave a laugh like (my favourite line being “we’re going to do this properly, not just mow him down like some Hackney crackhead”), but the interaction between the characters feels a boatload more natural than that of the typical British crime film. With an absolutely fantastic script, and additional dialogue contributed by the actors themselves, conversation flows a lot more naturally and it feels more real.

But the greatness in the script comes not just from the dialogue, but the structure as well. It takes the standard 3 act story structure and still adheres to it, but as well as your standard turning points in the story it also shifts genres. Which serves to disorientate you and build up your expectations so the final act completely throws you off balance before the closing moments of the film that really deliver that finishing blow.

Yeah...pretty much that really.

Which leads me to my final point and a possible reasoning as to why I’m really unsure about what I think of this film. It does have quite a few flaws, but it’s an absolutely wonderful piece of filmmaking, with dread, menace and tension submersed under the skin of every character and permeates out through their interactions as well as the films construct. It has a great script that offers a very daring and different kind of film and deserves the praise it gets. But above all else, it’s an examination of our relation to violence. There are some scenes that are quite brutal, and they only get more brutal as the film progresses. But they payoff they lead to is more of a punishment for our want (and by the end of the film, Jay’s want) of this cathartic release. It’s somewhat unsatisfying, but it is clearly the film that Ben Wheatley, the director, wanted to make. It’s almost like he wanted the ending to completely throw you out of the door like a violent drunk at a bar. You want to start trouble? Well you can fuck off out of here then.

And after that, you just stumble home, confused and unsure of what the hell is going on.

I'm pretty sure he just drunkenly stumbled into the Whitehouse after hitting the real George Bush with his car...

THE SKIN I LIVE IN

Sensual, Sumptuous, Sexual, Spanish.

One of the most irritating things in the world are people that don’t watch foreign language films because they “can’t be bothered with the subtitles”. It literally makes me want to go all Reservoir Dogs on their ears just so they have to watch everything with subtitles for the rest of their lives for being so bloody ignorant.

"What's that? You can't hear me? Would you like some subtitles now?"

Anyway, now that my rant is over I can move onto the film.

The Skin I Live In is the hotly anticipated new film from Oscar winning Spaniard Pedro Almodóvar (though saying that, the anticipation has mostly been on my part as I’m the weird film geek of my friendship group), and it is an Almodóvar film all over. Yet here we have a director who is an Auteur in every sense of the word, but somehow manages to stay fresher than the Fresh Prince himself.

You get filmmakers like Tim Burton, who, lets face it, are BORING. Oooo a new Tim Burton film, I wonder how much gothic inspiration is going to be swirling around Johnny Depp’s strange character who doesn’t fit into society for whatever reason. He is the Iron Maiden of the film industry, releasing the same thing again and again and again in a never ending spiral that even M.C. Escher couldn’t comprehend (high brow art joke fnar fnar fnar).

If Escher gets confused, you know we're in trouble.

So with this film, you have all the general Almodóvar traits: strong female characters, pushing the boundaries of gender stereotypes, bright colours, obsession and the connections between people. Yet these are all just part of a much grander plot that becomes an incredible feat of genre mashing that keeps you on your toes. Jumping between thriller, mystery, family drama, body horror, suspense, revenge and psychosexual drama with an episodic, almost choppy narrative is definitely an experiment that could have gone horribly wrong, but we are safely in the hands of a master as he navigates us through this utterly batshit insane plot.

Antonio Banderas is our protagonist, a brilliant plastic surgeon who has holed himself away in his country home working on a single project for the last 6 years. He has created a skin that you can graft onto a human that is tougher than skin is supposed to be. His test subject has remained imprisoned in captivity and is the key to his past. That’s all I’m going to say because you really have to see it to believe it.

The cast is amazing, Banderas is suitably intense and brooding, Elena Anaya is the brilliantly fragile, yet menacing Vera and Almodóvar regular Marisa Paredes plays a brilliant matriarch. There is very little I can fault with this film, apart from maybe the pacing is a little slow through the middle. But that doesn’t really matter considering that every frame of film is full to bursting of visual imagery that will make your eyes bleed in ecstasy.

EVEN STATUES OF LIONS EYES' WILL BLEEEEEEEED

This film is an absolute must watch not only for its fantastic direction, or the great performances, or the insane plot, or the beautiful visuals, but because it’s fresh, new. I have never quite seen anything like it and leaving the cinema the only word I could really think of to describe it was AWESOME. What is so great about it is that it has more ideas rammed into it than the karma sutra. A film that is so very much the way I like my men….RICH.*

Would you have sex with a cartoon character if they were rich? I'm considering it...

*Author is aware that this is a terrible joke that you would expect from Sex and the City, or the back of a penguin wrapper.