Driver

Those were The Driver's words after he take a crew of bank robbers for a test drive in their dodgy looking orange Mercedes and proceeds to trash it completely, knocking off both bumpers, tearing off a door, bumping both sides and flattening the roof. A classic scene and this is a good, late 70s action thriller from Walter Hill. It's film noir at it's best and it's pretty cool that every character doesn't have an actual name, we've got The Driver, The Detective, The Player and so on. Ryan O'Neal is cool without actually having to say very much and Bruce Dern is just Bruce Dern, wild eyed and crazy as the Detective determined to catch the Driver by using some strange policing. Isabelle Adjani is very quiet and a sexy foil for things to revolve around. The car chases and mash-ups are as good as some of the stuff used in Bullit, French Connection, The Seven-Ups and other top rate chase scenes.

Dern is a highlight as he is bonkers as ever and Walter Hill does a great job in direction and keeping things nice and compact.

Check it out!

In Los Angeles, a mysterious driver (Ryan O'Neal) is a sad man of few words that drives getaway car in robberies. One day, he participates of a heist of a casino and a player (Isabelle Adjani) is the main witness. However, she tells to the detective (Bruce Dern) in charge of the investigation that the suspect is not the driver of the getaway car.

The detective becomes obsessed to arrest the driver and he seeks out a gang that has robbed a supermarket and promises to "forgive" their heist if they help him to arrest the driver in a bank robbery. But the player helps the driver to exchange the dirty money.

I have recently seen "Drive" and a friend of mine warned that the 2011 film would be a remake of "The Driver". I have just seen this good thriller by Walter Hill and I have realized that they have the same storyline.

"The Driver" has characters without name and is certainly among the greatest car-chase movies. Ryan O'Neal has one of his best roles and Isabelle Adjani is extremely beautiful. The conclusion has an open end with the unknown destiny of the money. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Caçador de Morte" ("Hunter of Death")

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.

THE DRIVER (4+ outta 5 stars) Classic, no-nonsense, action-chase movie about a professional getaway driver (Ryan O'Neal) and the obsessed cop (Bruce Dern) who is determined to see him behind bars. Terrific chase scenes highlight this unjustly-neglected modern day film noir. No one plays nutty, obsessed characters quite like Bruce Dern. Ryan O'Neal as the bad guy/hero shows even less emotion than he did in Kubrick's "Barry Lyndon"... he's often accused of non-acting but I think his low-key, taciturn performance here is mesmerizing. He may as well be driving down to the corner store for a carton of milk rather than eluding a dozen speeding police cars. Isabelle Adjani doesn't really have much to do in this movie but look beautiful... but I guess that's enough. There is not a lot of dialogue and not a lot of character development. The characters in this movie aren't even given names! They are merely listed as The Driver, The Detective, The Player, The Connection, etc. This is a real high point in the career of director Walter Hill. He may have had more financial success with "The Warriors" and "48 Hours" but I think this is his best, most fully realized action movie.

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.