Drive (2011)

I don't see a ton of movies in theaters, often preferring to wait for the DVD releases of much-hyped films, so take this with a grain of salt, but Drive was the best movie I saw in theaters in 2011 and it wasn't even a close competition. I can't even quite explain what made it so great. The plot was pretty basic, the acting was fine but nothing special, and the film wasn't as action-laden as plenty of far crappier movies. I re-watched it for the first time last night after buying the Blu-Ray with some friends who'd never seen the movie before. About a third of the way through the movie, one of them summed up the film's power pretty succinctly, saying something like, "I'm very interested. Nothing has happened yet to suggest that I should be, but I'm very much hooked right now and wanting to see where this is going." And this was before the movie hit the point at which it kicks itself into high gear and becomes one of the most beautifully graphically violent films I've ever seen. A heist goes wrong, some people get betrayed - even if you haven't seen the movie, you surely know where it's going at this point. But instead of playing out as an intricate series of double-crosses or as a "man against the world" or anything like that, Drive keeps things simple, almost in a minimalist fashion. The guys who want our hero dead? They're just a few guys with a few henchmen. There will be no stand-off in which our hero faces an onslaught of well-armed mercenaries Transporter style, and the movie is much better off for it. Drive is a slow burn of a movie, allowing viewers to grow accustomed to Ryan Gosling's character's stoic calmness and silence, to the point where when he first so much as slaps somebody, it comes as a refreshing surprise. (And then he spends the rest of the movie so much more than merely slapping people.) Golsing's performance is understated and simple, much like the film itself, which features very few elaborately choreographed scenes and multiple film noir montage scenes in which Gosling is just driving around the city at night. Combine all of this with a synthpop soundtrack and a very '80s-inspired visual style (here are the film's opening credits) and you're left with a very unique and very awesome action movie that stands out against a myriad of generic modern action movies. Drive never even felt to me like something new as much as it did a new blend of so many classic movie tropes - the mysterious protagonist, the comically violent deaths, the heist subplot, the electronically-enhanced keyboard-laden soundtrack, the neo-noir minimalism, all combining to form an engaging and fun film experience. As I said, favorite movie of 2011, and nothing else comes very close.