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DVD The Driver
A tres cool mix of noirish grit and slam-bang action this caper film from director Walter Hill (48 Hrs, The Warriors) is required viewing for car-chase fanatics and devotees of '70s cinema. Ryan O'Neal and Bruce Dern are terrific as opposite sides of the law: respectively, a supernaturally skilled getaway car driver, and the dogged detective who's pursued him at the expense of all else. For his second feature film, Hill keeps dialogue and character development at bare-bones level (the characters are named after their primary function: O'Neal is the Driver, the stunning Isabelle Adjani is the Connection) and focuses on mood, tone, and, above all, some of the most stunning automotive action captured on film. The DVD offers widescreen and fullscreen versions of the film; unfortunately, a number of scenes cut from the theatrical release, including a prologue featured in The Driver's TV prints, were not included in this long-awaited DVD release. --Paul Gaita
This film has not been available on video for some time so I was glad to see it's release earlier this year. I'm a big Walter Hill fan and needed to view this to cap off his directing history. Much of what I'd read concerning this movie noted it as being rather cold and hard. More machine and less character. I can't say that I'd argue the point. As a sophmore effort it is a bit (just a bit) of slump from his earlier "Hard Times." The approach in story and feel of the production are quite similar to his earlier effort as are the deliberate structure and pacing. But this is a bit more stiff than "Hard Times." The dialogue is more stilted and though others rave about Bruce Dern's performance, I found it lacking due to the dialogue he is burdened with. Everything just falls a bit short of where it needs to be.
The glaring exception would be the car chases. they are staged and executed extremely well. And to Hill's credit, he doesn't kill you with them. Each chase is the right length for its spot in the story. I've had my fill of "B" movies where the car chases feel as though they comprise 50% of the running time.
I enjoyed watching this movie. It's not bad, but, where I could and have sat through more than on viewing of "Hard Times" and Hills next effort, (the nearly flawless "The Warriors"), It might be difficult to sit through this again.
The Driver Review
Great flick! The driving is realistic and exciting. Great cult classic I have enjoyed for 25 years. I learned how to drive in the same Ford LTD the movie starts with. Some editing mistakes are visible throughout the film, which makes it even better, like a Drive In Movie!
Slow Ride
The basic premise of "The Driver" reminded me alot of "Heat" where a stoic master criminal faces off against a passionately determined cop. The similarities end there. That's not to say that Bruce Dern's energetic cop was not an engaging character but there is no discernible chemistry between himself and Ryan O'Neal's taciturn driver. Dern may as well be acting with a crash test dummy. The only time that O'Neal seems to be really engaged here is in the film's car chase scenes. Another irritant was the film's characters don't have real names(i.e "the Driver", "the Detective", "the Player", etc.). Director-screenwriter Walter Hill may think this is profound but it smacks more to me as pretentious. The film can be recommended solely for it's car chase sequences as opposed to it's middling story.
Susan George (Straw Dogs) is ex-groupie Mary and Peter Fonda (Easy Rider) is wannabe-NASCAR driver Larry. They're thieves on the run from sheriff Vic Morrow (The Blackboard Jungle), who carries neither gun nor badge. According to director John Hough (The Legend of Hell House), his white trash cult classic was "an action picture with a lot of stunts." That about sums it up. The Tarantino favorite is slim on character development, but overstuffed with automobile-oriented action (most revolving around a 1969 Dodge Charger). Notable stunts include a game of chicken with a couple of 18-wheelers, a low-flying helicopter chase, and a death-defying leap over a moving bridge (Speed would up the ante with a bus). Adapted from the novel The Chase, Dirty... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Peter Fonda - Susan George Director(s): John Hough DVD Release Date: Released the 28 June 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Walker (Lee Marvin) strides through Los Angeles with the steel-eyed stare of a stone-cold killer, or perhaps a ghost. Betrayed by his wife and best friend, who gun him down point-blank and leave him for dead after a successful heist, Walker blasts his way up the criminal food chain in a quest for revenge. Did he survive the shooting or return from the grave, or is it all a dying dream? The question is left in the air in John Boorman's modern film noir, a brutal revenge thriller based on Richard Stark's novel The Hunter (remade by Brian Helgeland as Payback), set in the impersonal concrete and steel canyons of Los Angeles and eerily empty cells of Alcatraz. Walker kills without remorse, guided by shadowy "informant" Keenan Wynn, whose own agenda is carefully concealed, and... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Lee Marvin - Angie Dickinson Director(s): John Boorman DVD Release Date: Released the 05 July 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Art film and road movie collide for Vanishing Point, an existential car chase across the desert in a post Easy Rider America. Barry Newman stars as Kowalski, a taciturn driver who bets that he can drive a new Dodge Challenger from Denver to San Francisco in 15 hours. He loads up on amphetamines and begins his odyssey through the contemporary west while a funky black DJ (Cleavon Little) turns the driver into a folk hero and broadcasts advice on dodging the cops. It's like a counterculture precursor to Smokey and the Bandit, with the road as the last bastion of freedom and the DJ as a combination commentator and mystical guide. The slim plot offers a network of society drop-outs that aid the "last free Man on Earth" (as the DJ describes him) on his obscure but obviously... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Richard C. Sarafian DVD Release Date: Released the 03 February 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Prime Cut is a strangely likeable if decidedly oddball thriller from 1972. A happy collision of gangster genre grit (validated by Lee Marvin's granite-faced lead performance) with a strain of shameless (though shrewd) exploitation not unfamiliar to screenwriter Robert Dillon (X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes), plus the kinetic, semi-documentary wit of director Michael Ritchie (The Candidate) makes Prime Cut both a straightforward noir and a satire of itself. Marvin plays Nick, an aging enforcer for the Chicago mob, sent to Kansas City to deal with a ruthless cattle baron (Gene Hackman) who owes a half-million to Windy City racketeers. Hackman's character (inexplicably named Mary Ann), dismissive of old-guard crime chieftains, has set up his own heartland empire... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Lee Marvin - Gene Hackman - Sissy Spacek Director(s): Michael Ritchie DVD Release Date: Released the 14 June 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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This vastly underrated Arthur Penn film from the mid-1970s ranks as one of the era's nastiest and most fascinating pieces of business, a detective story that shuttles back and forth between Hollywood and the Florida Keys, with a plot nearly as complex as Chinatown. Gene Hackman stars as a tired, aging private eye who, as a favor to a friend, agrees to track down a runaway teen. But the case turns out to be something much larger: a smuggling ring of Mayan antiquities. The human impulses get darker and darker and Hackman's character gets pulled in deeper and deeper, even as his own life is falling apart. Ultimately, in one of his best and most unsung performances, Hackman winds up hurting the people he is trying to help. A great cast includes Susan Clark, Jennifer Warren, a young... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gene Hackman - Jennifer Warren Director(s): Arthur Penn DVD Release Date: Released the 12 July 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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