Drive (2011) should be more aptly called, “Drive: The Better Baby Driver,” despite being made several years before Baby Driver even regurgitated its creation into being. Drive is Baby Driver if Baby Driver wasn’t produced and starring rapists like Kevin Spacey and Ansel Elgort. Drive is Baby Driver on a smaller budget, with a noir/synth-wave aesthetic instead of a 1950’s aesthetic wet dream with mommy issues. Drive is Baby Driver with better music (if sometimes a little “too” on the nose).

Okay, I’m done.

Drive begins as a slow burn romance drama in which a single mother and a quiet brooding car mechanic/stunt man have intense staring competitions and occasionally drive around to a synth-wave soundtrack. It is ridiculously soft and wonderful and lord do Mulligan and Gosling have some steamy chemistry. From the first twenty minutes, I labeled this movie a ‘chick flick’ due to the costume designer’s genius choice of having Gosling wear shirts half his size and slather him in car grease (because he’s a mechanic of course, not for any other reason, I’m sure the designer said to the director several times).

The second half of the film is more John Wick than anything else, which is fine, because, also, chick flick. The girls and the gays love to see a brooding dude go absolutely insane because of his intense need to protect a child and/or dog and/or lady friend (in this movie, ironically, he’s trying to protect the woman’s husband, the father to her child, whom the Driver has formed a bond with, and seems more motivated to protect their family as a whole rather than because of his interest in the woman).

Drive was originally based on a novel by James Sallis, who mostly wrote science fiction, noir, and crime stories. A big negative of the film is the whitewashing of the character of Irene, who was originally Latinx in the novel, like her husband. They do attempt to heighten the character of Standard, played by Oscar Isaac, who was clear in his discussions with the director he wanted Standard not to be a stereotype.

Unnamed Driver goes a little crazy in the end but (spoiler alert) ends up leaving town to brood by himself instead of inflicting more trauma on the woman and her child, which is more than Baby Driver can say (in which the young heartthrob ends up magically together with the girl in the end, despite likely traumatizing her forever, and the girl of whom looks just like his mother…but that’s another review for another time).

As always, here’s a poem; 

Drive (2011)

kaleidoscope of pinks, 

LA’s hazy skyline 

like a rising spine 

a smear of oil 

becoming 

as soft as a kiss, 

stolen, 

in the elevator