Long before being the extreme “Fall Guy” earlier this year, Ryan Gosling was a brooding stuntman in Danish film director Nicolas Winding Refn’s 2011 action drama that now debuts to American audiences in the 4K disc format and celebrated in a limited SteelBook edition. Mr. Gosling plays a professional stuntman simply known as “The Driver” who occasionally moonlights as a getaway driver for heists.
After meeting neighbor Irene Gabriel (Carey Mulligan) and her son Benicio (Kaden Leos), he begins a flirty relationship with her until her husband, Standard (Oscar Isaac), gets released from prison. Standard quickly gets beaten up and forced by a mob boss to rob a pawnshop of $1 million as payback for his protection in prison. The Driver agrees to help him out, but the job goes horribly wrong, and the stuntman gets pulled into a deadly double cross that also threatens his life and his new friends as he tries to return the money.
The film offers plenty of nail munching and some heart pounding as The Driver, through whatever gruesomely violent means necessary, tries to extricate himself from the dilemma. Mr. Gosling consumes the role of a daring, calculated and methodical human with a brutal psychotic streak.
His performance is richly supplemented by Brian Cranston as his handler and auto shop owner Shannon, and Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman as a team of nasty mobsters. And, equally impressive as the cast and narrative, the first 10 minutes of the film offer a clinic on shooting a stealthy vehicle chase through the Los Angeles streets at night as The Driver ducks police cars and even a helicopter spotlight. The welcome ultra-high definition presentation, approved by the director, allows for even a crisper look at Mr.
Winding’s neon and noirish visual love letter to driving through a nighttime Los Angeles complete with numerous panoramic and overhead shots of the illuminated city skyline. Viewers will also appreciate exploring the city and its outskirts in detailed and color-balanced day or night scenes with recognizable moments at MacArthur Park, Pacific Coast Highway, Echo Park and a famed concrete bed of the Los Angeles River. Unwelcomed to the 4K release is the uptick in detail to the occasional bloody violent scenes, including a human head getting stomped, crushed to the point that it will make viewers wince.
The 4K disc contains a new, much-appreciated featurette offering 13 minutes of memories with writer Hossein Amini, editor Matthew Newman, actors Christina Hendricks (who played criminal accomplice Blanche) and Mr. Perlman and composer Cliff Martinez. Move to the include Blu-ray version of the film to find extras mirrored from the 2012 high definition release.
They are led by a 25-minute documentary focused heavily on the director and his thoughts on the origins and creation of the film as well as his discussing of the actors, key crew members and musical score. An additional four featurettes (roughly 30 minutes in total) cover the director, the development of the characters, the relationship between The Driver and Irene, and a brief breakdown on creating the three main chase sequences. Also, Sony tempts home entertainment collectors with an eye-popping SteelBook for “Drive.
” The front cover is a colorful illustration of a profile view of The Driver above the Los Angeles skyline surrounded by palm trees, all highlighted in neon pinks and blues with also an upper-body version of him, in the famed scorpion jacket, walking toward a car. The back cover offers a collage of The Driver looking over his shoulder in a torso profile, again wearing his jacket with the pink scorpion design, and spotlighted above a car driving in the Los Angeles river. The interior delivers a full-spread color photo of the stuntman leaning against his car looking toward a building on a Los Angeles street.
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