Drive (2011)

sus

Well-known member
Linebaugh is the biggest dipshit possible. In two days he will be asking me to make his girlfriend gluten-free dinner. And then he will stay in my flat. He is completely at my mercy. I could put flour in their soup as a thickener and now his girlfriend is doubled over on the toilet for three days. Have a fun vacation honey! I could give him a housekey that doesn't work. Have fun being locked out in sub-freezing New York November without any of your shit!
 

version

Well-known member
Is Black Rain any good?

It's nicer to look at than it is good. It's a pretty standard thriller with Douglas running around Japan. There's a stupid bit at the end where he has a sort of motorcycle fight with a Yakuza guy that's much more boring than that makes it sound.
 

sus

Well-known member
I can make a subtle alteration to the litter we use in the litterbox, suddenly he's stuck scrubbing cat piss out of all his laundry. I can tell the landlord to turn off our boiler and he'll be sleeping without heat for a week. Completely at my mercy. Yet he comes on here and antagonizes me like a tough guy. Buddy we will see exactly how tough you are come Monday.
 

version

Well-known member
I can make a subtle alteration to the litter we use in the litterbox, suddenly he's stuck scrubbing cat piss out of all his laundry. I can tell the landlord to turn off our boiler and he'll be sleeping without heat for a week. Completely at my mercy. Yet he comes on here and antagonizes me like a tough guy. Buddy we will see exactly how tough you are come Monday.

You're like Ryan Gosling in Drive or something.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I love it but if I were to describe it I don't think I'd start off by saying that it was unpretentious. I remember it being discussed on another forum and someone compared it unfavorably - in that respect - to Transporter saying "You wanna get yourself a film with a proper geezer in a proper motor".

I remember the elevator scene, I saw it in the cinema with a girlfriend and she started crying cos it was so brutal, violent and gory.

The other day Only God Forgives was on telly and I looked up something about it. I forget what that was but while doing so I was surprised to read Refn saying that he saw the invincible and silent Thai police chief as a reincarnation of or simply a continuation of the inscrutable and psychopathically violent driver in Drive - and that he was in turn an aspect of the monstrous fighting machine One-Eye from Valhalla Rising. I'm not sure if that was an off the cuff comment or reverse justification or that was something he had genuinely planned from the start.

Seems this was already stated in the other thread.... by @version

I think focusing on the 80s alone misses half the picture since two of the films most cited in relation to Drive are from the 60s (Le Samourai) and 70s (The Driver) and Refn considers Gosling's character in Drive to be some sort of mythical, deity-like figure who's also the police chief in Only God Forgives and Mads Mikkelsen's character in Valhalla Rising.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
That sort of thing feels like the current iteration of it along with Refn and stuff like Enter the Void, but it's also different. I think the wet streets thing only really exists from the 70s to possibly the 90s. The look I'm thinking of doesn't seem to be quite there with modern cities and digital filming. There isn't the same texture.
I get you cos I was thinking that some noir films would have probably had that look if they weren't black and white. But they were so they didn't.
 

version

Well-known member
Another one that's got that cold, blue thing is All the President's Men, specifically the scenes with 'Deep Throat' in the underground car park.

4_DeepTHROAT.png
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I've got the triple LP vinyl version

This used to get a lot of play in an office where I once worked, and I was sure I wrote a review of it for our office blog, and now I can't find it, but it was something along the lines of "6 in the morning, driving along a highway in California with two coked up dead eyed models in the back seat"


Symmetry - Themes From An Imaginary Film

Yeah... sun coming up, cracked sunglasses, trickle of blood from the nostril... where are you driving to? Who cares... maybe wrapping the open top ferrari round a tree is the only appropriate ending here.

A lot of talk about male fantasies of violence etc but I find the above much more appealing.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
What about Too Old To Die Young? Anyone seen it? What is it about beyond stylishly escalating and extraordinarily brutal violence?
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Yeah... sun coming up, cracked sunglasses, trickle of blood from the nostril... where are you driving to? Who cares... maybe wrapping the open top ferrari round a tree is the only appropriate ending here.
I mean, what you gonna do, go home and chill out, have a cup of tea and then pop DIY store to get that thing you needed? Those two worlds can never meet.
 
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