The Driver (1978) Reviews

• A matter of style

  TheFerryman2003-03-10

  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.

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• No Names Please!

  ccthemovieman-12005-11-04

  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.

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• A Fine Study In Cool

  WDD2004-08-16

  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.

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• A Real High Point In Walter Hill's Career!

  hokeybutt2005-07-26

  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.

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• "Get in"

  Ali_John_Catterall2009-11-03

  Less is more: a superb existential thriller to rival Point Blank and car chases to equal The French Connection, along with a couple of outstanding performances from the leads. Here, the underworld's most talented getaway driver (O'Neal) is obsessively pursued by a corrupt, power-mad cop (Dern), who'll stop at nothing to catch him - even if it means blackmailing a seedy gang of bank robbers to help lure him into a trap. Aiding The Driver (these are characters who don't need names) is the beautiful and enigmatic Player (Adjani), who helps double-cross The Detective. Walter Hill once mused that all his movies, like those of fellow director John Carpenter, were really westerns in disguise; hence the cowboy hats, Winchester rifles and, er, cowboys in the case of The Long Riders - which crop up repeatedly in his pictures. (Although where that leaves Brewster's Millions is anybody's guess.) The Driver, originally devised as a vehicle for Steve McQueen, is no exception: if O'Neal's country music-loving driver is referred to as 'The Cowboy', Dern, who once received death threats for killing John Wayne on screen, plays his twitching, preening nemesis like every crooked sheriff from Rio Lobo to Unforgiven. Everybody is A Man (or Woman) With No Name - archetypes defined by their roles ('The Player', 'The Connection'), existing purely to drive the plot forward. O'Neal plays the eponymous anti-hero as half-man, half-automobile, speaking only when absolutely necessary - "Get in", "Go home" - expending just the right amount of energy to get the job done, as evinced by three of the most incredible car chases in cinema. (Hill's previous work as assistant director on Bullitt obviously stood him in good stead here). As with Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, or Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samourai, which The Driver most resembles, nothing is wasted. "How do we know you're that good?" asks a doubtful crime baron, on procuring The Driver's services. O'Neal's unspoken reply providing rare light relief, as with casual insouciance and surgical precision, he reduces the dismayed owner's Mercedes to jigsaw pieces against an underground car park's concrete pillars to display his credentials. Like a manic mechanic, Hill similarly strips the story - part-action thriller, part-existential noir - back to its essence, siphoning off dialogue, back story, character development and love interest, until only the Zen flesh and bones remain.

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