The Driver (Ryan O’Neal) is a professional getaway driver.
The Cop (Bruce Dern) will do anything to catch him.
And the Player (Isabelle Adjani) is caught in the middle.
Inspired by the minimalism of Jean-Pierre Melville, The Driver feels like the end point of the seventies car chase movies - a movie stripped down to its essentials, powered forward by a simple plot and a lot of vehicular action.
Fittingly, Bullit star Steve McQueen was Walter Hill’s first idea for the title character.
While it makes sense - McQeen’s persona will forever be tied to cars - it also feels like a cliche.
McQueen had already starred in one iconic car chase.
Furthermore, The Driver is almost too archetypal in its characterisation that a star of McQueen’s calibre would unbalance the film.
O’Neal is more of a blank slate - that flatness fits the cypher of the character better.
The Driver is a pro living from job to job.
The film’s fire comes from Bruce Dern as the Driver’s nemesis. The Cop is defined by his need to capture the Driver.
Part of the conflict comes from how much of a contrast they are. The Driver has a code, while the Cop does not.
Breaking any and all rules of his job, morality and anything else that can get in his way, the Cop is as a part of the chaos around him, rather than an opposing order.
His scheme juxtaposes the Driver against a different variety of ‘cowboy’ - three gun-toting robbers whose only unifying trait is a desire to destroy wherever they are robbing.
As a man of honour in a world of grey, the Driver ends the movie betrayed - swindled out of the money. And the Cop is left empty-handed, his ends-justified-the-means approach amounting to nothing.
The pair are back to square one, their vehicular duel doomed to continue…
No comments:
Post a Comment