Ah, the getaway pilot. Whatever your heist film, whatever your cargo, many of film’s thieving gangs have that all-important wheelman (or woman).
These expert redline shifters come with “a particular set of skills” that are a problem for cops giving chase – sliding sideways around corners, barreling the wrong way down one-way streets, or skidding to perfect stops.
As well-worn as a “Mexican standoff” or interrogation scene, sometimes this heist-movie mainstay is a throwaway, an expendable character killed off in numerous ways.
Other times, they’ve been given the spotlight – wise-talking career specialists (The Transporter) or as an entire team of driving aces (Fast and Furious).
But if there was a lineage to these film characters, an Ancestry.com for crime movie driving crooks, you could trace many of them back to Walter Hill’s The Driver (1978).
The second film written and directed by Hill, The Driver is Hill’s attempt to bring a new flavor – an understated, minimalist style – to the otherwise rip-roaring action heist movie genre.
And though he was directing only his second film, Hill was uniquely experienced in making an ambitious (and potentially dangerous to shoot) movie like The Driver fly. He had been the second-unit director on the granddaddy of modern car-chase films, Steve McQueen’s Bullitt.
Yet while rubber looked ready to skid over the road, there were setbacks.
Hill wrote the title role with McQueen in mind, a dead-on casting that would instantly raise the film’s profile. But McQueen turned the part down, wanting to avoid yet another role racing cars.
EMI Films, the studio, turned to Charles Bronson. But the action dynamo, who had just worked with Hill on Hard Times, refused. Bronson felt Hill cut too much time from his wife and co-star, Jill Ireland’s, screen time in Hard Times’s final cut and wouldn’t sign on.
Then actor Ryan O’Neal’s agent contacted Hill. While O’Neal was primarily seen as a comedy and romantic lead, he believed he could carry the quiet swagger of Hill’s understated approach.
Hill was satisfied with O’Neal; the studio was ready. Filming commenced and post-production ended.
But on release, The Driver crashed comprehensively. It failed domestically and internationally.
And the critics weren’t gentle. According to Hill, “I remember the studio had this huge sheaf of Xeroxed reviews they’d handed me — you could stop a f—ing .45 slug with this stack, it was so thick. And of all the reviews in this six-inch thick pile, there was only one good one.”
Despite the double belly flop of box office and critical rejection, The Driver has found an audience with time, rising to a respected 79% on the critical site Rotten Tomatoes.
And the film has some high-profile love. Director Edgar Wright (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) refers to it as “an underseen classic.” He has revealed the title of his film Baby Driver is a direct homage to The Driver. Nicolas Winding Refn cited the film’s influence on new classic Drive.
And that filmmaker who always seems to get quoted about older movies that might actually be good, Quentin Tarantino, is a fan (and has referenced the film in both Kill Bill and Pulp Fiction).
But we’re film fans, not acclaimed directors. We rank in entertainment value, not necessarily technical achievements. We admire the beauty of a finished bridge, while an engineer might admire its sturdy supports, ugly or not.
So is The Driver a good movie in 2024?
The Plot of The Driver:
The Driver (Ryan O’Neal ) is an elusive criminal who takes money to drive on heist jobs.
The Detective (Bruce Dern) is a forceful cop willing to go to extremes to haul him to justice.
When The Detective sets The Driver up in a sting operation, he’ll need help from The Player (Isabelle Adjani) to come out on top.
The Rest of the Main Cast Includes:
- Ronee Blakley as The Connection
- Matt Clark as Red Plainclothesman
- Felice Orlandi as Gold Plainclothesman
- Rudy Ramos as Teeth
- Joseph Walsh as Glasses
- Frank Bruno as The Kid
- Denny Macko as Exchange Man
- Will Walker as Fingers
- Sandy Brown Wyeth as Split
- Tara King as Frizzy
- Fidel Corona as Card Player
- Richard Carey as Floorman
- Victor Gilmour as Boardman
- Nick Dimitri as Blue Mask
- Bob Minor as Green Mask
What’s Working Well Here:
Nighttime Car Chases, +4 Points
Being the crux of the film (after all, it’s called The Driver), the car chases had to work. And they deliver thanks to some creative choices.
Hill was fascinated by the number of shots captured from inside cars on Bullitt, an angle he brought to The Driver. That personalization, the drama inside the car while we witness the carnage outside it, is helpful. As his passengers wince at the next close call, The Driver is unaware of the stakes, only concentrating on his next move.
The film also switches to a POV cam, sitting on the front bumper as we surge toward the back of a sedan or as The Driver barrels down the wrong side of the road, weaving through oncoming traffic. It gives the audience the roller coaster danger of being about to slam into the big rig in the middle of the road as we whip around the corner.
A movie made ~45 years ago is bound to age. But while the vintage skid show may not match the intensity of films like Mad Max: Fury Road (though what does), there are benefits to the old school.
There’s no CGI, making all the danger refreshingly palpable. And Hill decided to keep all the car action after nightfall, setting these scenes apart from many other films.
A Little Demonstration, +2 Points
**Small Spoiler Alerts Here**
Despite being a chase movie, it’s The Driver’s demo that steals the show.
When The Driver meets Glasses and his cohort, they demand to know just how good he is – a big mistake. The Driver hops in their car and shows them with a wild, angry ride around an empty car park.
The unhinged menace of the usually quiet man – as The Driver slowly dismantles the car, the crew of thieves terrified – is a delight.
The scene’s strength comes from the confines and context.
In the film The Aviator, Howard Hughes obsesses about clouds while shooting his WWI fighter pilot film, Hell’s Angels. The fluffy floating moisture masses gave context that would allow the audience to observe the speed of the airplanes as they whizzed through and past them.
Here, all the concrete pillars of the parking garage make the moment. The driver slams the throttle and swerves between them, upping the skill level and intensity for the audience to understand.
He turns the rest of the garage into a madhouse playground. He comes to a stop ahead of a wall just in time to wreck the car’s bumper but not kill himself and his passengers. He intentionally hugs the wall to drag the bumper off the face of the vehicle or clips the handles of pipes, sending water gushing.
It’s the most fun the movie has (and reminds me of Guy Ritchie’s BMW film with Clive Owen as the driver, Madonna as an entitled pop star).
Double-Crosses, +1
As The Detective sets up a risky scheme that could easily cost him his job and people’s lives, all to catch The Driver, tensions rise.
And many players come together in the mix, all ready to jump ship and double-cross someone if the moment to take the money and run is there.
Rather than a straightforward ride where the anti-hero is sure to get away, you’re not sure of anyone’s allegiances, including his ally, The Player.
With everyone a lone wolf, it adds some needed tension to the film. The plot becomes more than an excuse for chase scenes.
Grit and Green Visual Palette, +1 Point
You often think of the 1970s as the age of disco, glitz, and glamor. But The Driver shows the seedy underside of a city in the decade that reeks of police corruption and desperation.
Hill says the film’s primary visual influence was artist Edward Hopper’s works. And while you don’t get a straight-up copy of the painter’s Night Hawks, there’s often minimal lighting and a green hue cast over the film, such as while The Driver escapes or during his off hours.
But it’s also a world of deserted, dilapidated buildings and warehouses that populate this criminal element’s sphere, the choice locations helping to show the underworld right there if you know where to look for it.
What’s Not Working So Well:
Characters On the Oh-So Down Low, -3 Points
Hill wanted to give this genre film a new mold. He said, “This was not meant to be an everyday action movie. I was trying to do something a little more, or a little less, but I was trying to do something else.” I admire Hill’s desire to change it up.
But the movie plays it so quiet it’s like listening to a symphony with your ear pressed against the concert venue door because you couldn’t afford a ticket to be inside.
We know The Driver likes country music and doesn’t care for the top two buttons of his shirt. That’s it.
The Detective is hell-bent on locking The Driver up, but you can’t picture him off duty. Like a cartoon, he wouldn’t exist past the edge of his desk at the station.
And the film won’t even tell us what crime The Player committed in the past.
The film stuffs the characters’ inner turmoil so far below the surface we’re questioning if it’s actually there. And without the film guiding my emotions, I started to get disinterested.
I can’t fault any of the actors. O’Neal, Dern, Adjani, and the rest of the cast deliver the mysterious, understated performances Hill wanted from them.
But while I am all for trying to let the audience read between faint lines, it ends up like the movie is deliberately refusing to paint any semblance of them.
Spare Some Dialogue? – 2 Points
The lo-fi vibes extend to the dialogue, and whatever simmering tensions there could be don’t ignite.
The venerable Bruce Dern is a fit for The Detective. The somewhat handsy, obsessive investigator talks enough to offset the intense silence of the other characters.
But the policeman becomes corny. What’s the point of his latest rant when he’s picking on characters like pet rocks?
With everything dialed low, there’s no playfulness between O’Neal’s Driver and Dern’s detective, making their scenes predictable.
Should I watch The Driver?
Total Arbitrary Points Score: 3 Points
The Driver was ignored by audiences and ridiculed by critics. Still, it laid the tracks other wheelman films like Drive or Baby Driver have been happy to riff from with great success.
With its hot-blooded nighttime car chases, gritty underworld staging, and washy green colors, it aimed for the artistic over the simplistic, formulaic genre piece. You must applaud Hill, cast, and crews’ approach, daring to chase something new.
But while its sparse style and distance from its characters were intentional and well-executed, I found the trick realized but not paying off. The Driver, The Player, and The Detective don’t form a memorable trio nor delight in their deadly game.
Still, director Edgar Wright likens the film’s impact to the band the Velvet Underground.
Wright says, “There’s that quote about the Velvet Underground Andy Warhol album — nobody bought it at the time, but the people who did buy it went on to form a band,” he says. “I feel the same way about ‘The Driver.’ The people who were watching are directors — we watched that movie and were excited and inspired. And I had to make a movie called ‘Baby Driver’ just to prove to you that ‘The Driver’ is influential.”
So there you have it. Maybe you’re an aspiring director; and this film, like an unsweetened tea, is just right to your taste. But for film fans like myself, it ended up more historically relevant than entertaining today.
P.S. – a RIP to lead actor Ryan O’Neal, who died about 8 weeks before this review was written.
The Driver is rated PG (in 1978 terms, probably PG-13 today) and directed by Walter Hill.
To my knowledge, the film is currently not available on streaming platforms.
You can watch the trailer here.
Disclaimer:
The factual information about the film in this review was gathered through online sources, such as Wikipedia, IMDB, or interviews. Misrepresentations and errors are possible but unintentional.
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