The Driver

As many other Walter Hill films, The Driver portraits a stripped universe inhabited by archetypes. These are nameless, speechless and can trace their roots to the principles of Epic.

It can happen in any city, during the late 70s or nowadays but as a film noir in its essence, exclusively at night.

The performances are great and the car chases register no equal in film history. The pace of the delivery of lines is almost as suspensful as the story itself.

The minimalism of Hill's execution resembles the cinema of Jean Pierre Melville and the film's universe picks up there where Hawks, Walsh and Siegel left.

It's an exercise in style, a triumph of a clever mind, a loveable barren film that adresses, from particular detail, general, eternal issues.

There is no baloney in this surprisingly good movie (it's not well-known). It also sports a real oddity: no one's name is mentioned in the entire film! Try to think of any other film you've ever seen where this is the case.

Why 'The Driver" is not better known is a mystery since the director (Walter Hill) and main actors (Ryan O'Neal and Bruce Dern) are well-known entities.

Maybe because Ryan, who people think of more as the likable male in the immensely popular "Love Story," "Paper Moon" and "Barry Lyndon" plays against type, playing an ultra-serious criminal. Make no mistake: he does it well. He is a man of few words in this movie and he handles that in a fascinating manner. Dern is always interesting. Isabelle Adjani, more famous as a French actress, is nice to ogle and she, too, doesn't say much in this film.

The rest of the characters in this "neo noir" are a bunch of nasties, giving that edgy feel.

If you like film noir and particularly if you like car-chase scenes, well, this movie is must-have, because there are several intense chase scenes in here and they are long. They're also well-photographed, fun to watch and certainly keep your attention.

Action specialist Walter Hill is in his element here with this tense, entertaining thriller that he both wrote and directed. Ryan O'Neal stars as a getaway driver for hire, who is hounded by offbeat detective Bruce Dern. Dern is dying to righteously bust O'Neal for something, but O'Neal is simply very good at his job. The detective will resort to any method necessary, but the driver is smart and seemingly always one step ahead of him.

One can hardly fail to notice the way that Hill deliberately doesn't personalize his characters too much, giving them descriptions or nicknames rather than proper names. And with the help of his very able cast, they create some very good character moments that are the real meat of this story. Its car chases are among the best you'll see in this genre, but serve to support the story instead of the story setting up the action set pieces. Hill again recalls styles from films of earlier decades - while, for example, his "Streets of Fire" was an ode to '50s rock 'n'roll, this film does owe a fair bit to the film noir of the '40s.

The people who populate this story are often all business, especially The Driver, who lives by his own code. There are things he'll do and things he won't do. Among other things, he employs a "witness" (French beauty Isabelle Adjani) and works with a "connection" (Ronee Blakley) who comes to him with job offers. The actors are all great, with the supporting cast also including Matt Clark and Felice Orlandi as Derns' fellow detectives, Joseph Walsh and Rudy Ramos as thieving lowlifes, and Bob Minor & Peter Jason in bit parts.

This tale is taut and convincing, told in a straightforward yet compelling manner; technically it's expertly done, with excellent editing by Tina Hirsch & Robert K. Lambert, cinematography by Philip H. Lathrop, and music by Michael Small. Hill's screenplay is full of interesting dialogue, especially in exchanges between Dern and Clark.

Hill has certainly done many fine and entertaining movies over the years, but this is one that tends to get overshadowed by his bigger hits such as "48 Hrs". It's a little gem worthy of discovery or re-discovery.

Eight out of 10.

The Driver is a stylish, detached and antisocial tribute to driving for the sake of driving and crime for the sake of crime, made at a time when those things still had a palpable meaning for most big-city Americans. The writer/director is Walter Hill, penner of the not too dissimilar cult film The Getaway a few years earlier. And although he made more successful films later on (notably 48 Hrs.), The Driver is arguably among his most gutsy and hard-hitting. It's worth a watch for the fervour it represents and instils, if nothing else. Ryan O'Neal, Bruce Dern and Isabelle Adjani are the attractive trio of lead actors.

I looked long and hard for this film and finally found it online... About a year ago I found the novelization at a local used bookshop and was enthralled. Then I shook loose a repressed memory of a scene from the Driver -well more like an image. That of Ryan O'Neal behind the wheel -shades in place, a study in cool.

Well I was obsessed and had to find the film. Once I did, it was like some sort of archaeological find. I popped it in the vcr (old school all the way) and sat back ready to be taken into a dangerous world of ruthless and amoral characters who live by some sort of twisted samurai code and law of thieves.

In a nutshell, this film delivered in spades. If you can find a copy of it, buy it or rent it. The car chases are extraordinary. The performances and cinematography are gloriously minimal and committed to the aesthetic of 'cool'.

It's a shame that junk like "The Transporter" and "Gone In Sixty Seconds" have come to embody the modern day equivalent of the existential bad guy and wheelman. Those films aren't fit to shine the chrome of this one.

One of Walter Hill's Best.

Thumbs Up.