Skip to main content

Walter Hill month: The Driver

A review by Brooks Rich

I have wanted to review this film since the first week of the blog. Maybe the most obscure film I've ever discussed on this blog, consider this a very forgotten Friday on a Thursday. The reason I have waited so long to talk about is that it's not streaming anywhere and can only be seen through a DVD or Blu-ray release. I waited to see if maybe it would hit a streaming site .... but, no luck. Let's discuss this sadly obscure crime film from 1978 that is my favorite Walter Hill film and one of my all time favorite crime films.

Ryan o’Neal is the Driver, a wheelman in Los Angeles who is the best in the business. Bruce Dern is the Detective, a cop hell bent on catching the Driver, no matter what. He'll even step outside of the law just to catch this guy. The film chronicles their cat and mouse game, with every other character caught in the middle.

I have discussed Ryan 'o' Neal before when I covered the excellent Paper Moon. See that review here:  https://www.cinemabasementblog.com/2019/09/forgotten-film-friday-on-saturday-paper.html. 

I don't want to focus on O’Neal’s fall from grace or how he became a Hollywood tragedy. The Driver is one of his best roles and he plays the titular character as both a likable antihero and a hardened criminal. The Driver is a rat bastard, but we can't help but root for him like he's a character from a '40s or '50s era film noir.

On the other side is Bruce Dern's detective character. This guy sees himself as upholding the law, but we all know he'd do far worse than O’Neal has done just to catch his man. The Detective hides behind a badge, and in some way that makes him more corrupt than the Driver.

Fans of the 2011 film Drive should seek this film out as soon as possible. There is no way Nicolas Winding Refn didn't take some degree of inspiration from this film. If you do track The Driver down on DVD or Blu-Ray, it would pair well with Drive. Personally I prefer The Driver as I like the aesthetic of the '70s and the attitude of crime films back then, and Drive nearly perfectly replicates it. I just like The Driver better. 

The Driver has shades of classic film noir, but it has that cynicism that came with the Neo-noir of the '70s. There are no good guys. Everyone is corrupt and looking out for themselves. This is a film for true cinephiles though I think some people who seek it out will find a hidden gem from the '70s that sadly fell into obscurity. Why did this film falter and bury Walter Hill in obscurity where Mean Streets and Taxi Driver made Martin Scorsese a star? Sometimes that's just how film works.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Forgotten Film Friday: Absolute Power

Clint Eastwood stars as Luther Whitney, a jewel thief who works in the Washington DC area. One night while he is stealing from a mansion he is forced to hide in a secret compartment with a two way mirror. From there he observes a sexual rezendevous with the wife of a powerful man and the President of the United States Alan Richmond (Gene Hackman) Suddenly the president gets aggressive and while defending herself the woman is shot to death by two Secret Service agents. Luther manages to get away with a letter opener the woman stabbed the president with. At first Luther plans to flee the country. But when he is disgusted by a statement the president makes, Luther decides to expose the crime. I miss these kind of films. The nineties was a great time for thrillers exactly like this. They are not the flashiest films but they are also not obsessed with big action scenes. It's all plot and character with them. Sure this plot might be a little out there but Eastwood makes it work. He's...
1 comment
Read more

John Candy month

 What can you say about John Candy? He was a comic genius who was taken from us too soon. There were a lot of comedic heavyweights of the eighties and nineties but Candy stood above most of them. If there is a Mount Rushmore of comedy I imagine John Candy would be on it. For the month of July we are honoring this comic genius. 
Post a Comment
Read more

Oscar bait month

 The Academy Awards. That time of the year when everyone debates what movies are truly the best and there is never a consensus and no one is ever happy. A movie can be incredibly popular and then it wins a bunch of Oscars and suddenly it's overrated and not very good or downright bad. It happens every year. But for the month of April let's take a look at those films that had Oscars on their mind and instead fell flat on their faces. Now Oscar Bait is a term that can also be applied to winners or films that did score a bunch of nominations. For example Bradley Cooper's film Maestro is very much an Oscar Bait movie even though it had a decent awards season. I want to talk about the films that did nothing. That were early contenders then either faded away eventually or just plain crashed and burned. Oscar Bait's biggest failures. What wrong here with these? Was the movie poor? Did something else just have a dominant run? Or were politics involved? Maybe all of the above. S...
Post a Comment
Read more