I was excited when my boyfriend and I rented the supposed thriller ‘Drive’. I was expecting to see a lot of action and a lot of driving, hence the title of the movie. To my dismay, the movie featured very little driving and in the place of the suspense and thrills the previews promised, there were drawn out screen shots of Ryan Gosling with no specific facial expression. The critics all claimed that this movie was a ‘thrill ride’. The only thrill I felt was in the form of relief when the movie finally ended.
Ryan Gosling had always been a favorite of mine since ‘The Notebook’, where he proved himself to be a ‘worth-while’ actor. My hopes were totally diminished after this film. I kept expecting something interesting to happen. The movie not only lacked dialogue but it lacked a plot essential to making a good film. First of all, watching somebody sit in a car and ponder out the window, saying nothing, doesn’t qualify as being ‘thrilling’ for me or for that matter anybody else I know. There were also a lot of full songs featured in the film just showing the overly boring characters sit and stare at nothing or sit and stare at each other. I did not have the opportunity to read the book this film was based on but I’m assuming that far exceeded the film. Either that or it wasn’t much of a read. I didn’t think it was possible to show so many different angles of a person’s face while they show absolutely no emotion. I get that it might have been the ‘allure’ of the character in the book to be a man of few words. That may work for a book but for the purpose of screen entertainment, the movie was highly disappointing.
I was actually surprised at the actors who invested their time into this film. I hope they got a good pay check out of it because the movie, in my opinion, was completely terrible. Who are these critics that said this movie was a thrill ride? Clearly they are people who lack taste and really need to re-evaluate what the word ‘thrilling’ actually means. I never like to take opinions of critics to heart but when it comes to this movie I really want to understand what they were thinking.
If you are thinking of renting this film, I would advise against it because it will be hours of your life that you’ll never get back. If you want to watch a thriller, find another choice because this movie falls under the category of ‘boring and drawn out’. The film lacked anything interesting and definitely lacked anything thrilling or suspenseful. It was a waste of my time and it makes me wonder who these critics are that found this movie to be so good.