By Ben Bussey
The Driver is one of those tricky little movies which it’s almost impossible to speak of without relating it to innumerable other movies. The second directorial effort from Walter Hill, it belongs within his distinct filmography of modern action tales with subtly mythic overtones: The Warriors, Southern Comfort, Streets of Fire. As a stripped-down all-American car chase movie, it picks up the mantle laid down by Bullitt, Vanishing Point and The French Connection, and raised the bar for those that came in the 80s, many of which have cited it as influence. With its representation of the city by night – seedy, neon-lit, mostly silent when the air isn’t filled with roaring engines, screeching brakes and thundering gunshots – it points the way for the cops and robbers crime thrillers Michael Mann came to specialise in, not to mention the likes of William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in LA. And of course, as might be ascertained from the title alone, there are distinct echoes of it in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive, both films centring on professional getaway drivers who speak as little as possible, stay cool in a crisis, and keep to a strict code of conduct – until those that interfere with their business push them out of that comfort zone. At which point – Mr Shit, may I introduce you to Mr Fan.
Almost deceptively simple plot-wise, with no character names used at any time, Hill’s film centres on the Driver of the title (Ryan O’Neal), who has become the obsession of the Detective (Bruce Dern). So great is the Detective’s desperation to bust this guy, he strongarms some unruly criminals into robbing a bank and hiring the Driver as their getaway – the plan being to catch him in the act. Of course, the Driver isn’t so easily played, and the criminals aren’t so easily controlled – but neither is the Detective so easily dissauded.
Again I can’t help but note the foreshadows of later Michael Mann films, notably Heat, and any number of John Woo movies you could mention, in The Driver’s sharp focus on the relationship between the cop and the criminal. While Dern’s detective is played as the shadier and less trustworthy of the two, this isn’t really a clear-cut good guys and bad guys tale. Dern’s character frequently uses sporting vernacular, openly referring to his hunt of the Driver as a ‘game’ – which might carry a certain irony, given the movie has subsequently inspired a video game – and as time goes on it seems that O’Neal’s character comes to feel similarly. Getting the job done one thing, but above all else each man wants to beat their opponent.
Yes, you guessed it, this is a very macho film. Happily, though, Walter Hill’s brand of machismo is that bit more sophisticated than that of most of the manly action flicks that followed in the decade ahead (though Hill did have his own low moments in the 80s, notably the cheesy Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle Red Heat). The quiet, low-key approach means that The Driver deftly avoids getting cartoonish. And though it may be thoroughly manly, it can’t be accused of sexism; Isabella Adjani and Ronee Blakely both play key, non-stereotypical roles which are vital to (pardon the pun) driving the narrative forward.
But, of course, the real meat in the sandwich here is the car chases. We might recall a story that made the news a few years back of a disgruntled customer trying to sue the studio behind Drive, because it didn’t have anywhere near as much car action as the marketing implied; well, I should hope the lawyers just slapped a copy of The Driver in the plaintiff’s hand and settled it that way. There is a lot of great, great car action in this movie, and it being 1978 it was all quite clearly done for real, with no blue screens in sight – indeed, it even appears to be O’Neal himself doing the driving at points, pulling off moves that certainly look potentially dangerous. I gather The Driver didn’t do too well on release, at least in part because Ryan O’Neal wasn’t taken seriously as a tough leading man, and who knows, maybe I’d feel similarly if I’d ever seen Love Story or What’s Up Doc – but I think he more than handles himself here, and it almost makes me sad he didn’t take on more roles like this.
Whether existing fans of The Driver will be completely won over by this Blu-ray edition may depend on how much they value extras; we just have a couple of trailers and a deleted opening sequence (which, frankly, was cut with good reason). Also, I’m no tech-head but the picture didn’t seem quite as clean and clear as you might hope for. Still, it’s a very entertaining movie that’s well worth seeing, and that’s always been the most important thing we want from any DVD or Blu-ray, isn’t it?
The Driver is released on Blu-Ray on 14th July, from StudioCanal.