It has been compared to Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, and the atmosphere of the two tapes is really similar. But if that taxi driver was just a lost person, not finding his place in a complex and lying world, the hero of “Drive” has long crossed the line beyond which the law has no force, and human life is extremely cheap.
It can be compared with the “Brother” Balabanov, but Danila Bagrov, for all his shortcomings, is still a Hero with a capital letter. A man in a scorpion jacket is not a role model, a macho, or a rock hero. He is completely frostbitten, and the remnants of humanity in his soul have become only an incentive for his final transformation into a machine of revenge and destruction. Although, perhaps, one of the teenagers who watched the film despite the age rating, and would like to become like him. At least in the '90s, in that troubled time when I was growing up - for sure.
Most of all, Drive is similar to Korean crime thrillers such as Bitterness and Sweetness, Oldboy, Yellow Sea. A particularly detached, everyday demonstration of savage cruelty. If the Tarantine characters love to shoot someone, then in this film that neither murder is a whole “fatality” with the use of barbed-cutting objects. (There is, by the way, a reference to the legendary “Olboyev” hammer, however, here it is used far from so spectacularly.)
What and why this film is hard to say. But it is difficult to deny aesthetic value. Psychedelic melodies with sweet female vocals lull, while the screen brews madness. Ironically contrast with the neo-noir style of pink titles. On the screen reigns a disturbing night full of subtle pulsating rhythms. The action time is our days, but the stylization for the kitsch of the 80s now and then manifests itself - then in the extravagant jacket of the main character, then in the already mentioned credits.
So why is this filmed? Probably to remind you that there is another world that most normal people wouldn’t want to go to. A world where not only universal human values and laws, but even money and criminal notions of honor fade into the background. All that remains is the drive, the thirst for blood and speed. Hands on the steering wheel, knife by sinus, night reflected in cold unblinking eyes. For someone - family, home, life. For him, only the road to nowhere. And this is his choice - the path of a predator in human form.
Result: stylish, gloomy, noir. Not for everyone. 8 out of 10 Original