The start of Nicolas Winding Refn’s film, Drive, is quiet and mechanic. It’s all clicks, clunks, revs, reverberations, deep buzzy rumbles, keys clanking, locks turning, gears changing, time ticking – cool, calculated, exact method unfolding. It’s clean and sober and you like it, from the top.
The quiet simplicity, the calculated core of this movie, shifts and carries on to the blackout quiet thunder of a notable score. And if, like me, you’re from Portland, chilly goose bumps will run their tight ranks on your forearms because you’ll hear it instantly – Johnny Jewel’s lustrous Itali-touch coasting alongside Driver and his crackers veracity.
Jewel and Refn have collaborated before with Refn’s 2008 film, Bronson. If you’ve seen that film, you know the muscle of the love affair between that singular Glass Candy track and the film. It’s pure nightclub poetry, as per the usual. But the alliance is pitch bloody perfect, just as it is here. Jewel has contributed just a couple of songs to the Drive soundtrack; Chromatics’ Tick of the Clock and Desire’s Under Your Spell, but he leaves his restrained mark, sincerely.
Drive is like a good dream gone horrific, but I don’t want to give anything away. Just know that it unravels exquisitely, as thoughtfully mechanized and automatic as it is, and it’s edited with a scalpel. The vibe is distant, yet physical. Touchable. The film slows down and lets you love it for what it is: equal parts Hollywood love story, existential driving movie, odyssey, action movie, Americana grindhouse, neo-noir, weird Lynchian cult classic.
That being said, there is not one thing defunct about this film. Not the car chases, not the love story, not the new-wave hot pink credits, not the itali-disco meets electro-synth score, not even the nutty – face flattening with a boot sole – Taxi Driver violence. Somehow, it’s all contemporary and chillingly fresh. Meticulously whole. It will reignite your love for commercial film, for the rev of an engine, for Ryan Gosling (as if you needed that), and for swanky, damaged disco. Just go see it. –Morgan Brothers