Movie reviews
Ryan Gosling plays Driver, a stunt driver and getaway wheelman with ice in his veins and a frozen heart. Driver begins to thaw a little when he gets to know the neighbours in his apartment block, Irene (Carey Mulligan) and Benicio (Kaden Leos), the young son Irene is raising alone while her husband, Standard (Oscar Isaac), serves time in prison. Nicolas Winding Refn’s film is perfectly pitched as an existential thriller for the first half, as Driver, beautifully underplayed by the monosyllabic, brooding Gosling, bonds with Benicio and falls for Irene, all the while keeping them at arm’s length so as not to allow them a glimpse into the seamy underworld where he earns a living. The tension cranks up when Standard gets out of prison, although Hossein Amini’s story, adapted from James Sallis’s novel, offers a novel twist away from the expected sexual jealousy when Driver and Standard pair up to pull off a heist. Double- and treble-crosses ensue, the movie surges up into another gear, but just when the tale seems about to deliver on its potential, Refn drifts off into another kind of story, one in which he attempts to mythologise Driver as a classic loner-hero in the mould of Alan Ladd’s Shane. It’s a pointless exercise. The minor roles are well filled out by Isaac, Leos, Albert Brooks and Bryan Cranston, the soundtrack by Cliff Martinez is superb, and the tale builds to a suitably intense finale. It’s hard not to feel, however, that the film is somehow less than the sum of its parts.
Ryan Gosling also features in Crazy, Stupid Love (15A), although here he plays a supporting role to Steve Carrell as Cal, a forty-something husband and father who is devastated when his wife, Emily (Julianne Moore) announces that she wants a divorce. Thrown out of his home, conservative, buttoned-up Cal roams the singles bars bemoaning his fate until ladies’ man Jacob (Gosling) takes pity on him, and shows Cal a few pointers on how to pick up women. A reborn Cal embraces his newly single life with enthusiasm, but Dan Fogelman’s story, which is directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, isn’t only interested in mining Cal’s frequent embarrassments for humour. Cal desperately misses his children, and it’s only in her absence he realises how much he loves Emily. Meanwhile, the bed-hopping Jacob might well have met his match in Hannah (Emma Stone), a sub-plot that gives Crazy, Stupid Love an unexpected depth, and one that allows the filmmakers to explore the fragility, hypocrisy and lunacy of love. Carrell is solid in the lead role, offering a plausible and empathic performance of a man who has had his mid-life crisis thrust upon him, and he gets strong support from Moore, even if her character isn’t really strong enough to give her talent much to work with. Gosling steals the show as the impossibly cool Jacob, mainly because Gosling is a canny enough actor to play the cool for all its worth, but lay himself open to vulnerability when the story demands it. Equal parts funny and touching, it’s a intelligent romantic comedy for an adult audience.
