re: Drive

I was so annoyed that I spent money in this cinematic turd that I blogged about it. Here are my thoughts while they were still fresh:

What first enticed me to see it were the trailers that seemed to portray an action movie along the lines of the first Fast & Furious or Gone in 60 Seconds, except without all of the flash. What I saw last night was a train wreck of such mind-numbing proportions that "Train Wreck of Mind-Numbing Proportions" would be a much more apt title for the movie than "Drive".

While the acting was really good all-around, little else was. I can't really dog much on the dialogue, because what there was of it was fine. This in itself is one of my biggest gripes. This brings me to another name change, this one much more appropriate. Changing the name to "People Staring Off-Camera Or At Each Other For Minutes At A Time Without Saying A Single Word" would almost be a more apt title for the movie except that its own wordiness could be used as a means to sue through false advertisement. There are whole scenes where the leading male and female just stare at each other. Uncomfortably. For a long time. Then smile. Or look away. Or just continue to stare. I guess a point that the writers forgot was that they do this because they are the only two people in the history of human-kind that find long, uncomfortable silences with complete strangers to be somehow heart-warming and a way to attract each other. In the real world, this would result in a restraining order. If Gosling' s pay for this was based on how many words he spoke, he would have come out farther ahead just donating a bunch of cash to charity for the tax write-off.

However, if your idea of cinematic excellence is staring at a static, little-emotion-showing Ryan Gosling's 20-foot-tall face then feel free to ignore my rant/warning/gripe-fest and shell out ~$10 of your own.

As uncomfortable as the loooooooooooooong silences were, the music (calling it a "soundtrack" gives it too much credit) sounds like it was crafted solely on an old 1980's-era Yamaha keyboard that came pre-packaged with someone whose job in the 80's was to create soundtracks for really crappy B movies. Even the utterly forgettable SyFy Channel's made-for-SyFy movies have musical scores that are better than this. It was so bad if it were put in the hottest porn movie ever made, even prison inmates serving life sentences wouldn't watch it. At times I had to wonder which was worse, the long, uncomfortable staring-at-each-other silences or the music. The jury is still out.

And where the music was poorly done, the violence was OVER done. Stab him in the eye THEN go back and get a knife to slit hit throat? Really? How was the eye part even necessary? Then kicking a guy's head in (with really lack-luster -maybe even "sissy"- kicks) until his head completely caves in? Whisky Tango Foxtrot? And what do they follow that with? Long, silent stares again. At least they weren't playing music at the same time.

And then finally there's the ending... The plot itself was pretty solid. The ending though... HOW THE BLEEDING *censored-censored-censored-censored-censored-censored*... *censored!* do you leave a million dollars just lying on the ground? Everyone that knew he had it was dead, why the hell didn't he at least toss a few bucks at the gal he spent the entire movie starting at but not talking to but yet somehow developed a relationship with?


To sum up: just because a movie is different or unique doesn't mean it's good. I've seen a better film in the urinal trough at the old Honky Tonk bar in Monroe.