The opening of this film is quite spectacular as it sweeps over the Los Angeles night. We hear a young man talking on a cell phone. He calls himself just a Driver and that is exactly who and what he is. Anonymity is his game all the way to the end. On this night he is driving a getaway car for two small time robbers. We see Los Angeles at its’ finest as the Driver races through the streets to outsmart the police. He succeeds and is able to walk away without getting arrested.
This Driver is an enigma with a baby-face look and a past we don’t really know about. The other characters in this story never call him by his name. His mechanic boss only calls him the kid. By day the Driver is a stuntman for Hollywood movies and on weekends he is a part time mechanic. He stays in a lonely and drab apartment where he stares out into the Los Angeles night. The Driver it seems is an outside drifter traveling through the California west.
The Driver does his job well. His mechanic boss wants to raise money so that the kid could racecars professionally. The boss goes to a long time friend with underground connections to raise $400,000 for a decent car to compete with. The deal is done and unbeknownst to the Driver. He is plunged deeper into the underbelly of crime in Los Angeles.
A woman enters the picture. Her name is Irene. She and her son Benicio live in the apartment down the hall from the Driver. He meets them and shows us for the first time his emotions. There is a great moment after they all spend the day together. The Driver and Irene are both talking quietly near the window and he reaches out to grab his jacket from her. What he really wants to do is hold her in his arms. She wants to do the same to him. Both of them are very lonely.
Irene’s boyfriend gets out of prison and is the father of Benicio. He wants to set things right with Irene and live a good life. That complicates things with the Driver who visibly gets jealous. A man he drove for approaches him in a restaurant. The Driver nearly becomes violent and in his eyes we see a glimpse of his past. We don’t know what it is, but it looks ugly. Irene’s boyfriend then gets beat up by men he owes money to. Irene and Benicio are threatened with their lives and the Driver wants to protect them.
The Driver offers to help the boyfriend rob a pawnshop to pay off his debt. The boyfriend is gunned down in the parking lot. The Driver holds an enormous amount of money and escapes by racing amazingly on the freeways of Los Angeles. He realizes that he has now become a target as two men come after him with shotguns. The Driver survives by the skin of his teeth after a brutally violent confrontation. He is now in more trouble as another contract hit is ordered on him.
Irene slaps the Driver across the face after he tells her of his participation with her boyfriend. It isn’t just a feminine slap either as we hear the Driver’s neck snap to one side. She was falling in love with him and realizes that he is worse than her boyfriend. What Irene doesn’t know yet is how violent the Driver can become. That is until they enter a building elevator where a gunman awaits them.
We see the Driver again roaming the streets of Los Angeles at night. What does he do now? Where does he go? How will he survive the death that surrounds him? Somehow and in some way he will drift through it all as an enigma. We know him more or less as a violent man with a loneliness that will stretch on for years to come. The drifter.