Drive(Starring Ryan Gosling, Albert Brooks, Carey Mulligan, Ron Perlman)
The quiet LA stunt driver at the core of Drive is an enigma. Played by a mysterious Ryan Gosling, he chauffeurs criminal jobs with surgeon-like precision and no sense of morality. Every day he tackles dangerous stunts with a fortitude that seems to preclude doubt. He stares his enemies down with a cold creepiness that is surprising from a handsome but not exactly rugged leading man. And then he smiles at a child, or he flirts with a woman, and reveals the smallest spark of some possible sweetness.
It's a weird juxtaposition to Gosling's steeliness.
â┚¬Å”If I drive for you, you give me a time and a place. I give you a five-minute window, anything happens in that five minutes and I'm yours no matter what. I don't sit in while you're running it down,â┚¬Â he says. â┚¬Å”I don't carry a gun. I drive.â┚¬ÂÂ
Sure, Drive is basically a man-versus-mob flick. But this film offers a few unexpected approaches. From the start, the titles feature city shots and synth-driven music reminiscent of the 1980s. The first hour is disturbingly action-free while we watch characters develop by observing their actions. No real back-story here, and none is needed. Then the film veers from quiet, almost poetic humanity to disturbing violence with an ease that might give you motion sickness. These are odd choices, not necessarily good ones.
Mulligan is serviceable as Gosling's neighbor, a flirty wife and mother trying to help her husband transition from prison life to the outside world. Much has been made of Brooks' against-type gangster turn, but it's the same stuff DeNiro, Pesci and Pacino have shown us before.
The brilliant casting choice is Gosling, whose quiet, weird performance moves the film. It's hard to call such a brutal, amoral, sociopathic man a hero. Yet he's very much a hero in given moments. Whether he acts out of self-interest is just one of the many questions this story presents.
Gosling's performance is an elegant, creepy turn that will have you thinking about him well after this ride is over.
Somehow from 2001 to 2002, the hapless Oakland As went from 11 straight losses to an American League record of 20 straight wins. How'd that happen? And can a movie make us care anymore?
After the damages inflicted by insider betting (Pete Rose), steroids (Jose Conseco, Barry Bonds), and the strike (all the other greedy suckers), the sport has certainly fallen from being America's favorite. Now Moneyball shows how an enterprising manager and a number cruncher used statistics to up their wins, making baseball seem even more inhuman.
General manager Billy Beane (not gay baseball player Billy Bean) had to create a team using just a sixth of the cash spent by the top-ranked Yankees.
â┚¬Å”There are rich teams, and there are poor teams. Then there's 50 feet of crap. And then there's us,â┚¬Â says Bean, played by Pitt.
So Beane hires statistician Peter Brand (Hill). Together, they start treating players as stock, looking to the undervaluedâ┚¬â€Âthe â┚¬Å”misfit toysâ┚¬ÂÂâ┚¬â€Âamong college teams and the minor leagues. The ragtag bunch of upstarts and supposed has-beens shocks the sporting world when the Oakland As make a serious run for the pennant.
It's an appealing Cinderella story, so why is this film only average? Because the script (co-written by Aaron Sorkin of West Wing and The Social Network) and the central plot device rely on mathematical analysis. It's interesting, but not very gripping. And when there are chances to connect on a human level, the film bunts with dry humor. We never get a feel for the players, on or off the field. They become statistics, dressed up with goofy personality quirks and superstitions.
As a one-time baseball fan, I found Moneyball's premise interesting. But the characters are as flat as a ground ball.
The film is co-produced by Pitt and mechanically directed by Bennett Miller (Capote). Interestingly, it was once in the hands of Steven Soderberg (Traffic, the Oceans films), who was reportedly dismissed for treating the material too much like a documentary. Either Soderberg knew there wasn't a lot of heart here, or he also couldn't find the soul in the cold, hard facts of Moneyball.
