Drive

First Hit:  A perfect role for Ryan Gosling and a very good film.

When an actor fits the role and it's within their wheelhouse, then add an interesting story, it is a pleasure to drop into the story and let it go.

Drive does this because the film is perfect for Gosling who plays the “Driver”. There are times when a character needs to have a historic storyline to make his character believable. However great acting, as delivered in this particular role, doesn't require this type of development to make the character and film work. In Drive we have the later. 

Driver is a mechanic at a small garage run by Shannon (played by Bryan Cranston). Driver also works as a Hollywood film stunt driver, and does odd driving jobs for robberies. He runs into a neighbor woman named Irene (played by Carey Mulligan) who has a young son. He is immediately attracted to Irene and her boy. The chemistry between them is obvious. There are lots of moments of silence between them, but they say so much.

Irene is married to a Standard (played by Oscar Isaac) who is in prison and when he gets out he owes money to the mob that protected him while he was in prison. For payback, the mob asks him to do a job and he solicits Driver to help him.

The job goes bad and the local mob is now after the money that Driver is holding. Driver wants to give the money back to protect Irene but Bernie (played by Albert Brooks) and Nino (played by Ron Perlman) want everyone eliminated that know about this blown job.

Gosling is perfect as the quiet, private, intelligent and remotely caring Driver. This is a grand performance because he says so very little but provides so much information. Mulligan in a role that matches her age is wonderful. Her ability to play off of the quiet Driver is amazing. Cranston is very good as they guy beholding to too many people and continues to have “bad luck”. Isaac has the right look and feel of the guy scared and tough at the same time. Brooks is the surprise here. He’s great as the local mob ringleader with a dark heart. The defining moment is when he kills Shannon in a caring, subtle, and decisive way. Perlman is just right for this off-handed second in command guy who at “59” continues to screw things up. Hossein Amini wrote a very good screen play including when to have silence in a character’s role. Nicolas Winding Refn directed this with a great feel for LA and the type of characters which reside there.

Overall: I fully enjoyed this film but I would have like just a little more driving.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army

First Hit: Despite a lot of interesting looking creatures this film is a bomb and definitely wasn’t worth seeing.

I’m not sure why I went to see this film, maybe I was just curious or because I admired Guillermo del Toro’s wonderful work in Pan’s Labyrinth.

The quick story line is: There is the all powerful Golden Army of the underworld which is currently sleeping because of a truce between the underworld and humans who had previously waged epic battles. Whoever has the golden crown will have control over the Golden Army which is virtually indestructible.

When the truce was finalized, the crown was broken into three pieces, one held by a human, one by the king of the underworld, and the third by Princess Nuala (played by Anna Walton) daughter of the king. The son of the king, Prince Nuada (played by Luke Goss), who is also the twin of the princess, dislikes the truce and runs off into hiding. When he learns that part of the crown, owned by the humans, was being auctioned off, he comes up to the human world and steals this one part of the crown.

Hellboy (played by Ron Pearlman) and his cohorts (played by Selma Blair, Abe Sapien and others) are called in to investigate this other world invasion because they have powers of their own and will assist the human government in finding out what is going on.

The Princess senses the danger of what her brother will do and joins Hellboy and his band on stopping the prince from obtaining the final piece of the crown and the map indicating where the Golden Army is being hidden.

There are battles throughout this sequence  between the Prince and Hellboy and crew. In the end you already know who wins already so I don’t need to go any farther.

This film is a mess. It meanders and the story line is wasted and was very uneven in its quirkiness. Add poor acting and the constant shift between comic book characters and an attempt at making the film believable, we end up with a fully grown mess.

Overall: This film is a full on groaner.