Hacker Cinema
Drive
2011 · Film · 100 min
Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
Driver is a skilled Hollywood stuntman who moonlights as a getaway driver for criminals. Though he projects an icy exterior, lately he's been warming up to a pretty neighbor named Irene and her young son, Benicio. When Irene's husband gets out of jail, he enlists Driver's help in a million-dollar heist. The job goes horribly wrong, and Driver must risk his life to protect Irene and Benicio from the vengeful masterminds behind the robbery.
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38 comments on Hacker News
Yes, especially his work own the movie 'Drive' was hugely influential on the popularisation of this genre. I think he was featured in the documentary "The Rise of the Synths" also (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Synths)
RIP
I'm a big fan of french electro and Kavinsky is no exception: I discovered him and his Nightcall hit through the soundtrack of the movie Drive.
IIRC he got into electronic music late in his life after a friend gave him a long-outdated Atari ST running Cubase (DAW).
RIP.
looking forward to this movie, hasn't seen him in really good movie where he would play lead since TPBTP though not sure I liked TPBTP more than Drive, Half Nelson, The United States of Leland or The Believer (2001)
"""I have an idea for a movie club, where two movies with a tenuously connected theme are watched (separately) and then discussed. If you've seen the movies "XXX", and "YYY", tell me what is similar about them, what's different, what are some possible "connected themes" and who tackled the topic better?"""
...time passes...
"""Now that you understand the idea behind these pairings, recommend five more pairings, but don't give any hints as to their connections, just five bullet points with "A vs B" movie titles. Bonus points if there is at least a 10-year gap between them, and they are both not box-office blockbusters (but make sure they are slightly more popular or recognizable movies, not exclusively low-distribution non-critically-acclaimed indie movies)."""
* Children of Men vs Snowpiercer * Lost in Translation vs Frances Ha * No Country for Old Men vs Hell or High Water * The Prestige vs The Illusionist * Drive vs Nightcrawler
...I know guidance is "don't just post AI output", but this is specifically a human-to-human discussion around novel(?) ways to interact with AI/LLM's. I've found they're _really_ good at conceptual-venn-diagrams.
There's a book "Algorithms to Live By" (ie: look for matching socks via BFS/DFS or whatever). Asking the AI: "you know a bunch of algorithms, what are the top three that should have been in the book?" => "what are the weakest that could have been removed?"
Recently during performance reviews, we had to write our self-assessment and had guidance from on high like: "make sure you talk about people skills, technical skills, customer impact, etc." ...so yada yada: "I'm so amazing, I'm so great" => "Dear AI, I've been given this guidance `...`, please compare my handcrafted storytelling against the guidance `...` and tell me where I have missed covering a requirement" => "...now please give help w.r.t. simplifying or cleaning up the section on $INCREDIBLE_TECHNICAL_ACHIEVEMENT b/c I was focusing on describing my personal impact, but need help making it more digestible for others".
The combination of instant, tailored feedback and the fact that they've read the whole internet, "watched" every movie (read the script, read critics reviews, reddit, forum discussions, etc), read most published books, and that they're 80%+ plumbers, doctors, lawyers, car mechanics, etc. make them an unstoppable research assistant, especially when crossing connections that would normally be "expensive" to do so.
Example: ask a [doctor+lawyer+plumber] about the health and legal impacts of lead solder in pipes or whatever. Instead of needing to schedule 3 people's times, wait for them, pay them, etc, you can get instant "free" feedback, educate yourself, and then have a more solid foundation to branch out from there. Such incredibly useful tools!
An interesting coincidence that Cranston also had a significant supporting role in the 2011 film Drive [0] (after he was already in breaking bad).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive_%282011_film%29
If you're wondering who this was: in the English-speaking world, he's probably most famous for Le Samourai, which was a great film and an influence on a host of other works, most recently being Drive. I really enjoyed Un flic too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuhPR3xeJm0
Also Prisoners and Enemy were impactful imo (and Sicario of course). I feel like where Villeneuve fails in that respect, filmmakers such as Nicholas Winding Refn succeed— I just watched Drive for the first time (I know I know), and it was one of the best cinematic experiences I’ve had in probably 5 years. Even though the film had a bit of a distant, hands-off quality, one connected with the film and characters completely (a lot of that maybe had to do with Gosling’s impeccable performance, but I’m sure the director had something to do with it).
Curated list of favorite underrated movies:
#1 pick for HN Crowd: The Man From Earth // must see, especially if you like philosophical movies (don't recommend the sequel by the way)
Runner's Up:
Being There // absolute classic and must see for every person, at least once
Peaceful Warrior
The Lion In Winter // one of the best dramas ever made, and unbeatable cast with young Anthony Hopkins
Predestination // incredible drama about time travel paradoxes
The Interview // Hugo Weaving
Vitus // amazing story about a piano prodigy who fakes losing his talents to have a normal life
The Perverts Guide to Cinema // documentary, Slavoj Zizek's tour de force psychoanalysis of cinema as an art form; addressing the philosophical and psychological question of whether cinema (and other art forms) fulfil your desires, or rather teach/train you both to desire (and what you should desire), thus the sensationalistic and polemical invocation of it as "perverted"
Le Professionnel (French film, not to be confused with the one with Natalie Portman)
Revolver // Guy Ritchie's quote "It took me three years to write this film whereas Snatch took me three months". It is a masterwork metaphor about the ego, ego death, consciousness, meditation, spirituality, and the nature of reality. Recommend reading an interpretation of the film either before or after viewing to better appreciate what is happening in the story as it is most metaphorical.
Rest of the List: The Big Kahuna, Tao of Steve, Crazy Stupid Love, Megamind, Eyes Wide Shut, Dead Poet's Society, Before Sunset, Gambit, Five Minutes of Heaven, Temple Grandin, Croupier, The Good Guy, 3 Idiots, Limitless, Drive, Whiplash
That, plus Nicolas Winding Refn's Pusher trilogy is also canonical Dogme 95. That's before Refn became a mainstream director with his Drive. Despite the fact that most Danish directors have already abandoned Dogme you can still see its influence in their more recent films. I think Dogme 95 can be considered the New Wave Cinema moment of Danish cinematography, it's been incredibly prolific and influential.
2010: Me dancing to Richie Hawtin's soundtrack Making Contakt on a rave being deeply connected to that moment https://youtu.be/X8nMXdMuXIA
2011: Me watching the intro scene from the movie Drive and being blown away by the song https://youtu.be/9LUTOj7rX94
2012: Me playing Hotline Miami and being blown away by the score https://youtu.be/oKD-MVfC9Ag
What a string of experiences connected to techno.
Given advances in technology, I'm not so sure it has to be a blockbuster for there to be a comparison. Especially given how formulaic blockbusters can be. (Eg there are 6 Transformers movies, with 2 more in development.) Drive (2011) is an indie movie, costing an estimated $20 million (inflation adjusted) compared to almost $220 for Terminator 2. Everything Everywhere All At Once cost $25 million to make, just over the threshold of "indie".
Comparing computing power is a bit handwavey, but former Pixar employee Chris Good estimated that the SPARCstation 20 render farm cluster that rendered Toy Story had only half the power of the 2014 Apple iPhone 6. https://www.quora.com/How-much-faster-would-it-be-to-render-Toy-Story-in-2011-compared-to-how-long-it-took-in-1995
I remember Alt-J performing a cover of "A Real Hero", another song from the Drive soundtrack, at Glastonbury festival years ago. The film and soundtrack were really cool.
Wow Drive is from 2011? Man... I feel like it's a new movie. I loved it, maybe that's why.
This reminds me of the movie Drive (2011), in particular the first song on the soundtrack, Kavinsky - Nightcall
https://youtu.be/MV_3Dpw-BRY
Similar to the feeling I got when re-watching Dark Knight Rises, and Drive on a plane (Lufthansa?). Something was missing — the violence. I guess airlines have to assume that any age can watch films on those screens and cut films accordingly. Strange to think that a country wants to treat the entire population like Lufthansa treats kids.
I have no problem to defend Drive against Fugitive, Fugitive aged really bad and it feels like cheap TV movie, Drive is obviously much newer, has great cinematography, great score, atmosphere, nice action and aged really good despite being 11 years already (but I am not really some big fan of Drive, just saying it's better than Fugitive). Btw. just because something is "stupid action flick" it doesn't mean it can't be good at it, you can have good stupid action flicks and you can have bad stupid action flicks. I don't usually watch stupid action flicks (I'm more (social) drama guy), but when I do I want to watch the good ones.
I'm recently rewatching movies starting from 90s and while The Rock was still enjoyable even in 2022 (8mm or Absolute power were meh, same as already back then), I remember Fugitive being pretty bad already many years ago. Movies like Die Hard, Speed, Con Air, Mission impossible, Enemy of the state, were all better than Harrison action movies, which always felt like cheap TV movies with low production value. Meanwhile we have 2 year newer Heat, which is still for sure in top 5 best action/crime movies ever and aged amazingly and could easily beat any day any new action/crime movie. The production value and director skills are on completely different level than Harrison action movies. I just checked the most famous Harrison action movies I remember from 90s - Fugitive, Clear and Present danger, The Devil's Own and Air Force one - all 4 have different director, 3 directors nobody remembers and 4th only thanks to Das Boot.
what about Prisoners, In the bedroom, The guilty (2018), Good time, Oldboy (original, not from Hollywood though), Collateral, End of watch, Training day, Drive, etc. - all these were released after and they are better movies (most of them more thrillers than action though, but some straight up action), I can't really recommend exactly same alternative since I don't watch stupid action flicks like Fugitive, now that I have much more options than in 90s
Really good movies appeal to different audiences at different levels, if you're looking just for pure action, funny lines, you may find it there, and if you're looking for a deep story, you may find it there as well. So in theory, there needn't be a contradiction between a wide audience and an awesome movie.
Admittedly, these movies are hard to come by, Drive (2011) would be one of them for me, although there must be a more recent one I can't think of now.
> Drive was made purely for the ambiance and aesthetic.
Exactly what I mean :) it's a deliberate B-movie but with amazing cinematography.
> I enjoyed it
As did I, but from a (former) media studies geek/student POV.
For an example of the polar opposite, I thought Drive[0] was exceptionally high quality, yet not even remotely entertaining.
It made for some nice screencap wallpapers, though.
[0]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0780504/
I'd like to start by saying you made a very good argument here, but I would like to make some comments of my own as someone who is absolutely infatuated with this genre. You mention that a lot of synthwave is easy listening, but ironically most of the synthwave artists I tend to enjoy are a lot more "hardcore" I'd list 'carpenter brut','dance with the dead' and 'master boot record' as some good counterexamples to what you described. As for the social aspect, many people agree that the movie 'Drive' really kicked off the modern synthwave movement with its soundtrack and how the music played into the actions of the main character. The interesting thing about that movie is that it exists in a world almost directly opposite of what you described as "smooth social brand exterior" all the characters are living in some form of grime or filth, and the main character is a socially stunted badass. This movie (atleast for me) really set the stage of what synthwave conveyed, its fantasy of what I was told growing up were better times. Hotline Miami is another piece of art that prominently uses the genre to convey harsh ultra violent scenes of death and destruction, the beat and tempo drive the player to move quickly and kill swiftly in these dingy crime infested apartment complexes. Because I was so heavily influenced by Drive and Hotline Miami I see the genre as this brooding soundtrack for antihero's, like the kind of music that plays when the protagonist does some horrible stuff and subsequently smokes a cigarette looking off into the distance trying to understand what they just did. I'll post some example tracks below of darker stuff that fits this ethos.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wy9r2qeouiQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E9-rDplPrM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNE2oCZH_4k
Heard that story recently watching Drive. Decent movie.
Oh I would definitely love to have any recommendations you'll give me, I feel like I've seen so many movies that it's hard to find good ones now.
In the emotional vein of the movies discussed above:
Nightcrawler is very very good and very unusual. Prisoners is very good though more ordinary in its plot and characters and I found that I forgot about it after a while and didn't realize I'd seen it until I was rewatching it... It's not especially tense but it's well written. Drive is an incredible noir thriller. Goodfellas is another one that has unforgettable moments that will force you to just clench your fists, even if in the end the story left me feeling a bit empty. I should probably throw out American History X too, which is a different sort of movie but still has that feeling of "oh my God did that just happen?"
Yes. Also in ‘Grease’, ‘Drive’ and a bunch of other films: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_River#Entertainment_setting
Initially, Mistral came to mind (also used in the movie Drive). However, there are significant differences.
I'm just amazed somebody can come to this conclusion.
20 years ago you had to go to the shop, buy ONE film for $15 from a limited shelve, bring it back home, put it in a device you bought specifically for that film format and that does only that, navigate through a dubious UI, be forced to watch ads, then eventually get to the film. If you didn't like it... too bad.
Now for the same price, you have access to thousand of movies __and__ TV shows. No ads. Instant watching. Most of them were release on TV or on theater so basically same quality than other channels.
And people complain ?
I mean I do think the general level of quality of movies and TV shows is going down, but it has nothing to do with netflix. The good/sucks ratio is plummeting much the same on every medium (and I think it's because of us voting for crap with our money, like for most things in our society).
Well, I guess it's beautiful some people arrived at such a level of comfort in their life that they consider that amazing commercial offer to be not up to their standard.
> PC propaganda
While their original content do try to target specific niches including PC and SJW trends (it makes sense IMO), there are plenty of excellent content on netflix that don't follow this trend. Just opening my front page: Ajin, Rick and Morty, black mirror, battle royal, altered carbon, lastman, dirk gently, breaking bad, american beauty, pulp fiction, drive, trainspotting, house of cards, david chapelle, mad max furry road...
Yes, things like Sabrina, disenchantmenent, etc are pandering to a certain crowd. So what ? You can just click on something else. There is a lot of something else.
I absolutely loved the film and thought it was an incredible piece of art and a piercingly realistic depiction of a certain VERY REAL type of masculinity. You're lucky that you find it unbelievable / overdramatic.
Anyway, when I was a kid I used to love seeing those burnt capsules in the Science Museum in London. So crazy to see the story rendered to beautifully, along with the politics, the oxygen fires, the bouncing off the atmosphere... I couldn't have asked for anything more.
I thought his portrayal was a realistic vision of the pitfalls of masculinity, and not melodramatic at all. My dad's like that, except he smiles instead of having the blank Gosling face. My dad didn't cry even at his own mother's funeral.
Seeing Gosling/Armstrong closing up the notebooks where he'd been trying to figure out how to cure his daughter's brain cancer, seeing him cover his face to cry silently, seeing him snap at his friend "Do you think I left there because I wanted to talk?", his fear of his emotions... It was just so true to life. I cried multiple times in that film. Of course films are always a bit romanticised - I have to say at no point was the illusion broken for me.
I think that film gets into my top 3 films along with Gattaca and The Matrix.
I love Drive but it was really Blade Runner 2049 that made me realise that his "silent" roles are actually a deceptively simple comment of the state of masculinity, kind of like American Psycho (film > book IMO - interestingly the screenwriter of the film was a woman and the directory of the film was a woman, and the film & book are a critique of that version of masculinity).
Also Ryan's performance in The Big Short made me realise that he is CHOOSING to do his "silent" stuff when he does. He's a very talented actor.
One can easily see why they picked him to play a replicant in the Blade Runner remake.
Apparently you can also pretend he's a replicant in all his other movies, and it often works out pretty well. Drive for example would make perfect sense with his character being an unwitting replicant.
Just an odd note, I agree with a lot of the comments on this thread, but I thought Drive was a fantastic movie.
I saw it in the cinema and remember my heart was rushing from all the emotion after seeing it. I could hear the soundtrack in my head for days afterwards (it may be the best part of the movie for me). Drive's easily in my top 10 of the last decade.
Maybe my taste is just strange.
Personally I like to look at https://www.cinemascore.com/ as I tend to trust audience surveys a touch more than the critics. I do look at Rotten Tomatoes also. The problem with RT to me is that if all the critics are slightly negative than it gets 0%, all slightly positive it is 100%. The percentage score isn't really nuanced on how bad or how good the movie is. At least that is how my understanding of how the system works.
One of the worst cases for me was the movie Drive: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/drive_2011
Terrible movie in my opinion, but critics just loved it so 93% RT positive. But Cinemascore gave it a C-, which is a terrible score and the way I felt.
I think the psychological distance only partially explains the reversal in public sentiment from scorn to adoration. Obesity was never a serious problem in the communities I have lived in. The U.S's obesity epidemic is an abstract concept to me (as I have never experienced it first-hand), and yet I don't have any nostalgia for it.
Surely, it must be more than abstraction and omertà. Some drug organizations do not brand themselves with a public services front - see the TED talk by Rodrigo Canales http://www.ted.com/talks/rodrigo_canales_the_deadly_genius_of_drug_cartels?language=en.
I only speak for myself, but I like crime movies/drama for the allure of ruthless power. It's a unique sort of power that can only be obtained illegally, and at some great moral expense. This Faustian device makes for intriguing plots.
Who else can have a mountain of cocaine? Who else can execute business with such brutality? What other line of work involves Zero Halliburton cases stuffed with Benjamins, to go with high-powered handguns and sharp suits? These are proxies for power that a pleb like myself can barely begin to comprehend.
There's a scene in the Godfather Part II that I really like, when the nervous money-grubbing landlord comes into Don Corleone's office and gives him cash so that a previously disagreeable tenant can stay in his inn. The absurdity of the scene belies Corelone's power like the tip of an iceberg, and it's visually interesting to see a normal-looking guy wield such mysterious power.
This is echoed by the common "crime lord is the manager of a pizzaria by day" trope (Breaking Bad, Drive, Road to Perdition), where a seemingly weak front has a hidden-dragon kind of vibe.
To summarize, I think that "psychological distance" theory only carries the audience halfway, in that they don't feel the revulsion towards mobsters because they don't deal with them personally. I think most of the allure comes from the forbidden power.
ProRes 4444 is lossy, but it's still more than enough for most projects. Drive was shot in ProRes 4444 and I deliver network television shows shot in 422HQ or 4444 all the time.
Raw is nice but definitely not strictly necessary.
Drive has some great usage of this type of cinematography if I recall correctly. I think the author may have ruined watching movies for me now though. :/
This leads to what strikes me as a potentially negative heuristic for determining what moments in a given film have worth. Summer flick drivel aside, would RunPee assign a high pee time to, say, Drive, which has a significant amount of mood-setting long shots without any dialogue or plot-relevant action?
Excuse me for probably taking this too far, but this app seems to imply that films are merely the sum of plot-related scenes, and that doesn't sit quite well with me. Would the app consider every establishing shot in Alien to be pee-able?
Drive. Blown away by it. Thought it was another car racing film after seeing the trailer, but it was actually IMHO the best film in 2011. Edit: Forgot the why: Minimalistic. Beathiful Story and propably the best music editing in a film.
For some movies i dont mind doing what you recommend, but for avengers theres no way i will settle with watching it at home. The same thing happened with Drive last year (its only out NOW in Japan) and that really pisses me off.
Well, you could legitimately use 2GB by simply purchasing a movie that they discussed in the presentation. A 720p version of "Drive" on iTunes is 3.17GB. Soon it will be upgraded to 1080p, which would be at /least/ 5GB. That's at least $50 in data for one movie, assuming the data plans stay the same.
"So what have they done lately?"
Not even counting foreign films, here are some darn good productions from the past five years:
Midnight in Paris, Hugo, Drive, Warrior, Black Swan, Inception, Inglourious Basterds, Up, Whatever Works, The Limits of Control, The Dark Knight, WALL-E, Gran Torino, The Wrestler, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, Into the Wild, Ratatouille, The Departed, and The Prestige.