Walter Hill’s sophomore directional effort comes to Region 2 Blu-Ray, and we get to tell you all about it. So without further ado…
The Driver stars Ryan O’Neal as the top flight, best in the business freelance getaway car driving titular character (although, as we’ll discuss; the word ‘character’ is something of a stretch of definitions). Ranged against him, is Bruce Dern playing the detective hell bent on bringing this ‘driver’ to justice (although quite why he’s so maniacally focused on nailing someone who is ostensibly a non-violent criminal over and above all the other gun toting 70s scumbags around, is not readily explained). Analogies with Moby Dick’s Captain Ahab in this sense are somewhat apt, and often cited.
The film is a stylish ice cold cat and mouse caper, with Dern doing everything he can to try and catch O’Neal in the act (so to speak), including coercing some failed robbers to try and hire him for a set up sting. Things go pair shaped of course, and the movie races towards a denouement that; while not particularly downbeat (in the way that so much of 70s cinema was), feels devilishly frustrating and unresolved. There’s a reason for that, and It’s rooted in the fact that there is no obvious hero/villain dynamic to get behind.
Hill intentionally doesn’t bestow actual character names to any of the players. All of them are referred to only in terms of their plot function (The Driver, The Detective, The Player etc). This surgical removal of the most fundamental methods by which we the audience connect and identify with the characters in movies, is compounded again (and allow me to reiterate that this is quite intentional), by O’Neal’s leading man being one of very few words, and even less emotive expression. He is an empty vessel, into which one can try and pour whatever one sees fit, but it’s not easy to do so. Dern’s cop, by contrast is verbose and extremely cocksure, but again still a vessel; he talks much, but says very little. Neither men are particularly likeable or admirable, or for that matter, particularly unlikeable or obnoxious either. In a deliberate effort to subvert and surprise; they often don’t do what you would expect them to in terms of the established character tropes that they seem to represent. Hill ensures we know almost nothing about them, and learn nothing more about them throughout the film. In this way, he runs the risk of his audience not really caring. The two main supporting female characters (the Player, and the Connection), also follow this philosophy, and are there simply as utilitarian functionaries to the plot. Hill even deems the obvious tropes of sexual frisson between characters as surplus to requirement too. Personally; I always liked the simplicity and subversive emptiness of these ciphers interactions. O’Neal’s stoic, implacable, unflappable driver was pretty cool from a certain point of view, but you do have to work a little to get into that mind set. Dern is a little more engaging, and has the bulk of the dialogue.
The film hovers around quasi-classic status, and is probably best remembered as a close but ultimately ’2nd tier’ player in the ‘best car chase movies’ pantheon after bonafide top draw classics like Bullitt, and The French Connection (although this is subjective, and you would not find it difficult finding people of the opinion that The Driver is at least as good, if not better). What’s in no doubt is that the car chases here are extremely well put together, and provide ample thrills and spills even if they don’t quite make up for the character vacuum elsewhere. What’s more, the car chase stuff (as well as a very memorable scene in an underground parking lot where the driver demonstrates his proto-Ken Block Gymkhana skills), looks dangerous, kinetic, and real. After more than two decades of asinine CG enhanced car chases in films; it is truly thrilling to go back and watch a film like The Driver again, where the whole shebang was done old school, for real. I don’t know how much of the driving O’Neal actually did himself, but the film certainly does an extremely good job of convincing you that it is always him at the wheel. There are no obvious trolleys or driving rigs anywhere, and many shots clearly show O’Neal helming, so maximum respect for that.
Let’s move on to the disc presentation before summing up.
We have a single dic Blu-Ray containing a very nice new print of the movie. One or two films of this ilk have come through our hands here at Filmwerk Towers recently, and I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing a fair few of them. Most of the time I have to begin my appraisal of the transfer with some kind of qualifier. This is to pre-warn the reader that we really cannot judge this type of 70s or 80s output with the same expectation of quality that we would a modern release. Seemingly, this has as much to do with the amount of restoration money that can be thrown at a movie, as anything else. That being the case, and the budget for restoring The Driver (beyond the expense of digitising a really clean print of it), probably being quite tight; the result is extremely impressive.
The only area where one might become irked is the sound mix, which is simply a digital mono mix. It’s clean of course, but there are scenes here that are incredibly dense sound wise (the car chases with multiple cop sirens blearing constantly for example). The complete lack of any degree of separation of these sounds will tax the ears pretty quickly. It does’t help that all the police cruisers seem to have the exact same 70s stock siren (funny that), so when layering 4 or 5 of them together in the mix, along with all the screeching tyres and other noise effects, a mono mix gets pretty wall of sound, and not in a good Phil Spector way.
Disc Extras
So it must be said that the bonus materials on this Blu-Ray are a little disappointing. Several movies from Water Hill’s back catalogue have found their way to spruced up ‘first time on Blu-Ray’ releases recently (The Long Riders, Southern Comfort among others; and they have consistently tended to feature a decent retrospective documentary filmed either for the Blu itself, or at least very recently. Something similar was therefore somewhat understandably expected to be in evidence when this Blu-ray was announced. Unfortunately, no such luck.
We get an alternative opening of the movie; which is interesting in the light of the general critique of the film’s treating of back story or set up as anathema, as it provides a little setup about some of the main players. It is easy to see why Hill rejected that approach though, and the film works much better completely withdrawn from the concept of exposition or backstory.
The US edition of this Blu-Ray release also has an isolated score bonus feature, but I couldn’t see this option on the UK version under review.
Rounding things out are a compliment of original trailers and teasers for the movie.
Conclusion
So obviously this Blu-ray isn’t going to set anyone’s pulses racing based on its bonus materials, and in some ways it would have been better to have made it a pure vanilla release, priced aggressively. That way all the focus is placed on the movie itself. Apart from that occasionally crowded mono mix getting a little overbearing at times; the film is a total delight. For a movie whose action takes place mostly at night; the visuals are never murky, and detail is never lost. I found it incredibly revealing to do a kind of A/B test with any of the unrestored original trailers included on the disc, and the movie program itself. By contrast (pun intended), the restored film transfer is profoundly stunning. The clarity on offer here is presenting Hill’s stylistic imagery in a very flattering light (again, pun intended).
Ryan O’neal has effectively been a TV actor for so many years, it would be interesting for those who know him from Bones to see him here. Similarly, anyone who has seen Alexander Payne’s Nebraska will know that Bruce Dern is quite rightly enjoying something of a renaissance in cinema right now, and while I would always recommend people interested in his back catalogue should start with Doug Trumbull’s amazing eco-sci-fi masterpiece Silent Running, his performance as the detective here is eminently worthy also.
Ben Pegley