Film Notes: Drive

Drive (2011) film notes by Tova Gannana for the L.A. Noir: Shadows in Paradise series, presented by Greg Olson Productions. The series runs through November 2025 at SIFF Cinema Uptown. 

Driver (Ryan Gosling) mouths on a toothpick like it’s a cigarette. He wears leather gloves and isn’t afraid. We see his reflection in a window. He’s on the phone, giving directions. He’ll wait five minutes, but no more. Driver doesn’t seem to be attached to money. In fact, he seems detached from what most people want: fame, cash, status. His demonstrates his passion with actions. Driver is a mechanic, a stunt double, a getaway driver, a man who’s lived in the same place for a while, going mostly unnoticed. He’s a shadow in LA. What motivates him? We don’t know. As a stunt double, Driver plays a police officer. He pursues instead of being chased. In the movies, the capers get away while Driver flips his cop car, while in life, he’s always in control at the wheel.

Driver’s coat in the beginning of Drive (2011) is pristine: white silk with a yellow scorpion stitched on the back. At the end of Drive, the coat is colored in blood. He drops off his vintage hotrod and picks up a common-looking car at the garage where he works; that night, he’ll drive it as the getaway. Those committing the heist wear ski masks. Not Driver, who tightens his face like a fist. A manhunt ensues. Driver loses the spotlight that is searching for them from a circling helicopter. By car, Driver can outmaneuver anyone pursuing him. Driver folds his white silk coat and throws it over his shoulder for a cover.

There’s no jaded dame beside Driver, just an ordinary woman, Irene (Carrie Mulligan), a diner waitress, living on the right side of the law. She has a young son, Benicio (Kaden Leos), and a husband, Standard (Oscar Isaac), in prison. Driver brings Irene and Benicio home from the bodega where they’re stranded after her car won’t start. Driver is Irene’s neighbor. They’ve crossed paths before with a nod; no conversation. Irene invites Driver in.

Her place looks torn from a noir film. This is where the female lead lives. This is where she offers him water. This is where her heart is interrupted, its rhythm changed by her mysterious neighbor. Driver tells Irene that he’s a stunt driver. “Isn’t that dangerous?” Irene asks as he stands in her apartment. He doesn’t reveal his illegal profession. A painting of roses hangs on Irene’s wall. Driver’s apartment is spare; Irene’s is a home; she plans to stay. Driver comes around, he takes Irene and Benicio out for rides, as much for him as for them. In his car, Driver and Irene are free of their former lives, but only momentarily. Before Irene, Driver could be anonymous. For Driver, the pressure builds when it becomes personal, when Irene’s husband Standard comes home, when Standard is beaten up for debts he is told he owes. When Driver sees how this affects Benicio and Irene, that’s when he feels connection and responsibility.

In Drive there are skyscrapers, strip malls, diners, parking lots, stoplights, street lights, a light lighting up an elevator, restaurant lights. There are inner lights lit up by a new face; Irene and Driver hope one another will become a familiar face.

All Driver wants to do is drive. He wants to go to work and fix what is broken mechanically. He wants his hands soiled in grease, not blood. He wants Irene though she is married. Standard is in trouble now that he’s out of prison. Driver gets involved. Driver can’t walk away. That raises the question: Is his purpose to be where he’s needed?

The mischief makers are many, but they begin with Bernie (Albert Brooks) and Izzy (Ron Perelman), who goes by “Nino”, who are Jews running an Italian restaurant. Bernie loves Chinese food. They’re toughs. Their establishment is a front. They sell pizza, but the money they make is on shakedowns, not margheritas. “They call me kike and pinch my cheeks,” Nino tells Bernie about the mob in the East. What he means is: Him, they don’t take seriously; he doesn’t belong. What they lack, Driver has. The more Driver feels for others, the more selfless he becomes.

There are moments in Drive with no dialogue. Something else is at play: an electrical current. An understanding. An ignition on and running. A road open with possibility. A knowing that the world can’t possibly be that way. Driver has tools. A way to avenge the death of Standard. A way to keep Irene and Benicio safe from Bernie and Nino, who believe death is a solution. In their world, it buys silence; but the dead call from the grave.

Is Drive a film about the history of cars road tripping across America, escaping if only for awhile, that which binds us to our lives? Is Drive a film about ambition, how it blinds us to how others see us? Is Drive a film about impossible love and the sacrifice we make to keep one another safe? Drive ends in many ways: in Standard being released from prison, depriving Driver and Irene of their romance; in Standard’s death, in which, unbeknownst to Irene, Driver played a role; in Bernie and Driver’s knife fight, which is seen in shadow; in Driver confronting Nino while donning his stunt double mask made by a human hand, but with only one eerie expression. There is no ending to Drive because Driver, wounded by Bernie, doesn’t die. In the last frame, he gets in the only sure seat he knows: behind the wheel.

Because Irene knows that if she follows Driver, there’s no coming back, she will live. As the elevator door opens leaving Driver and the hood he has just killed, a stunned Irene exits and goes by foot.