The Driver – Studiocanal

Director: Walter Hill
Screenplay: Walter Hill
Starring: Ryan O’Neal, Bruce Dern, Isabelle Adjani, Ronee Blakley, Matt Clark, Felice Orlandi, Joseph Walsh, Rudy Ramos
Country: USA
Running Time: 91 min
Year: 1978
BBFC Certificate: 15

Producer Lawrence Gordon and writer-director Walter Hill had moderate success with Hill’s directorial debut, Hard Times and the pair met to decide how they’d follow it up. Gordon reportedly said “I always wanted to make a movie about the wheelman” instead of the burglar as with most heist movies. This idea immediately clicked with Hill and he set out to write the script for his second outing behind the camera, The Driver.

Though it’s well-received now, particularly in Europe, The Driver performed quite poorly in the US. If Hill wasn’t already in production with The Warriors when this came out, he might not have been able to go much further in Hollywood. Thankfully that film was a big success and Hill continued to become a director I greatly admire.

Even if Hill had stopped at The Driver I’d have been pretty happy though as I consider the film the best of his impressive oeuvre and it sits among my favourite films of all time, in fact.

So, it didn’t take much to convince me to take a look at Studiocanal’s new 4k remastered edition of The Driver, hitting Steelbook, UHD, Blu-ray, DVD and Digital on 5th December. I still don’t have the kit to watch UHDs, so I got hold of the Blu-ray and my thoughts follow.

The Driver stars Ryan O’Neal as the titular (otherwise unnamed) character. He’s the best in town, so well sought after by the criminal community, though his services come at a high price and he’s very selective about who he works with.

After he evades the police yet again in a high-speed chase across the streets of L.A, The Detective (Bruce Dern – no one gets a proper name here) is mightily p***ed off so resorts to desperate measures.

After capturing a trio of low-rate bank robbers, The Detective offers their ringleader, Glasses (Joseph Walsh), a chance to go free if he sets up another job and hires The Driver to be his wheelman, giving The Detective the drop-off point at the end, so he can finally catch him.

Glasses agrees of course and a tense game of cat-and-mouse ensues.

Meanwhile, The Driver is drawn to a woman (Isabelle Adjani) who was paid off not to identify him in a line-up. The pair unsuccessfully help to keep each other out of trouble.

The Driver appeals to me so greatly because it hits a couple of my sweet spots. First is its stripped-back approach. Hill has always kept his scripts and approach streamlined but here he takes it to another level, avoiding any extraneous details at all, keeping dialogue to a minimum, throwing you into the action and keeping you there. Contemporary critics complained about the lack of character names and backstories but I think it’s the film’s strength.

The film also plays to my tastes through the fact that I love a good car chase and this is, in my opinion, the greatest car chase movie ever made. There are three key sequences, on top of some other brief set-pieces, and each one is remarkably well-staged. Hill was 2nd assistant director on Bullitt, which explains a lot, though he admits he didn’t shoot any of it, he was just there, helping police things.

Most famous car chase movies up to that point were shot in the daytime but Hill wanted to set his film apart from those, so set each major set piece at night. This allows for some gorgeous-looking driving, with great use made of headlights and the neon-lit setting.

It’s all expertly edited too, cutting fast when needed but also holding back at times, to allow the audience to keep on top of what’s happening and the geography of the setting, so that they feel thrilled but never confused.

The film’s sound is also kept minimal, with music only occasionally used for quiet atmospherics, whilst the car chases are largely only scored by the growls of engines and squeals of tires.

O’Neal blindsided some critics at the time, who believed he was miscast in a role very much against type. I think he works a charm though, with his boyish good looks reflecting his too-cool-for-school attitude.

The rest of the cast is strong too. Adjani reportedly wanted to take a Garbo-esque approach, retaining an air of mystery to her character, and she pulls it off effectively. Dern steals the show though. His detective character is a nasty piece of work. He’ll do anything to stop our hero, possibly out of jealousy, possibly out of some strange love for The Driver. As he says, he “respects a man who’s good at what he does”.

With its stripped-back approach to character and storytelling, there’s an arthouse feel to The Driver. It certainly owes a debt of gratitude to the work of Jean-Pierre Melville, particularly his ultra-cool gangster movies Le Cercle Rouge, Le Samouraï and Un Flic.

The Driver is an influencer in itself though, going on to inspire a number of future car chase movie makers, most notably Nicolas Winding Refn with Drive and Edgar Wright with Baby Driver. It even greatly inspired a video game series, also called Driver. The first level of the first game is a direct reference to the ‘job interview’ O’Neal’s Driver makes mincemeat of in the film.

I could fawn over the film forever but I’ll tie things up by saying that The Driver is stripped-back, perfectly formed and beautiful arthouse action at its finest. It’s the US equivalent of Melville and Hill’s finest hour. Essential viewing.

Film:

The Driver is out on Steelbook, UHD, Blu-ray, DVD and Digital on 5th December as well as selected cinemas now in the UK, released by Studiocanal. I watched the Blu-ray version and it looks great. There’s a lovely natural grain but the image still looks sharp. Blacks are nice and deep which likely reflects the intended style, though it perhaps loses a little detail in spots due to the all-pervading shadows. It sounds wonderfully rich and largely clean, though some of Dern’s whispery scenes have a touch of hiss.

Disc/package: