Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

The Driver Blu-ray Movie Review

Hold on tight.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 6, 2013

Two of the best remembered car chases in film occur in 1968’s Bullitt and 1971’s The French Connection. Maybe by 1978 audiences thought they had already seen it all in terms of spectacularly staged dueling automobile sequences, which might be one reason Walter Hill’s The Driver never made much of an impact on stateside audiences, at least with regard to those who are adrenaline junkies living on the vicarious thrills of watching various high speed maneuvers in a variety of muscle cars (and trucks) marauding through urban landscapes. But there are probably at least a few more salient reasons that Hill’s film was largely overlooked at the time of its release. Much like one of Hill’s other overlooked seventies’ outings, Hard Times, The Driver features a laconic hero who is in many ways a complete cipher, an empty vessel waiting for each individual viewer to fill with self- supplied content. In fact The Driver’s main character, known not so coincidentally only as The Driver (Ryan O’Neal) is so taciturn he makes Charles Bronson’s character in Hard Times seem like a veritable Chatty Cathy (or whatever the male version of that doll might be called) by comparison. Hill is dealing in types rather than traditional characters in The Driver, and so along with O’Neal’s titular individual, we also have The Detective (Bruce Dern), The Player (Isabelle Adjani), and The Connection (Ronee Blakely). These people exist almost as spectral entities, there to serve the plot and not to experience any of the much ballyhooed “arcs” that are a staple of Screenwriting 101 classes. That may in fact be the major reason The Driver failed to connect with American audiences. It’s a kind of semi-convoluted caper film without the benefit of a sympathetic character to root for and with a cool, detached tone that only really explodes during some incredible car chase sequences.

As a variety of critics mentioned at the time of The Driver’s theatrical release, there are more than passing similarities between Hill’s film and Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1967’s perhaps more traditionally structured (and presented) crime film, Le Samourai (yet to be released domestically on Blu-ray). Both films posit a solitary anti-hero involved in illicit activity who utilize a comely female for an alibi and who have an almost obsessive cop trailing them. But Melville’s film features a more standard star-crossed love angle than Hill’s film does, and it also utilizes the audience’s expectations in a more familiar way than Hill’s outing does. In fact Hill seems intent on subverting the audience’s expectations at several moments. We’re given just enough information to understand the plot, but there’s virtually no connective tissue presented here—by design. We join the story in media res (something made even clearer by the jettisoned opening included on this Blu-ray), and are left to ferret out what exactly is going on as the film progresses.

What is going on in The Driver? Some might claim “a whole lotta nothing”, but as in Hill’s Hard Times, another film that willfully defies pigeonholing and traditional structure, this outing is a surprisingly complex cat and mouse game between the O’Neal and Dern characters. The Driver is an ace getaway man, able to maneuver cars in ways that seem to defy physics. He’s the go-to guy in Los Angeles for high profile crime sprees, including a hit on a casino which starts the film out in high style. Adjani’s character seems to be a witness, the only one to actually catch a glimpse of The Driver in the getaway car, but when The Detective calls her in to identify the supposed culprit, she insists it’s not him. Only later do we find out that The Player and The Driver are in cahoots, though again the film is strangely discursive. Have these two always been working together, or is this a new arrangement? (The jettisoned prologue provides a clue.)

The Detective is a virtual Ahab on the trail of this criminal Moby Dick, and he is not about to let “the cowboy” (as he terms The Driver) out of his sights. When a low grade supermarket robbery goes awry, The Detective blackmails those thieves into hiring The Driver in what The Detective is convinced is a sure fire trap that will finally deliver The Driver to him red handed. The Detective’s underhanded ways don’t sit well with his junior officers, but he won’t be swayed, and in fact almost toys with The Driver, showing up to his Spartan hotel room to deliver the lock pick that The Driver had used in his last job and then left in the getaway car—almost as a taunt to The Detective.

While it’s hard to really care very much about these people—they are, after all, types more than characters—the film is unusually compelling and even suspenseful, especially once things start to devolve after The Driver does indeed work with the low rent thieves. The Driver has a number of standout sequences, including several knock your socks off car chases which are immaculately staged and viscerally exciting. The actual high point of the film, though, comes in an ostensibly less adrenaline pumping moment, when the thieves ask The Driver to prove that he’s good enough to warrant the high prices he demands. What follows is a one man demolition derby that is both frightening and very funny. Through it all The Driver barely utters a word of course.

The Driver Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Driver is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Twilight Time with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. This is yet another really great looking high definition master licensed to Twilight Time by Fox. The film is incessantly dark, with the bulk of the action taking place at night or in dim interiors, and it's my hunch that Hill and cinematographer Philip H. Lathrop intentionally push processed large swaths of this outing, for there is both remarkable shadow detail as well as pretty overwhelming grain at times and the slightly gauzier look that uprating usually engenders. Colors are vivid and very accurate looking and the image is stable and precise. There's one quite odd insert of a skyline where a bizarre effulgent blue glow overtakes the right side of the image (see screenshot 12). I'm frankly not sure if this is another example of the pushed quality of much of this film, but it's an unusual, transitory anomaly in an otherwise well detailed presentation. The elements are in very good condition, with no overt damage to report.

The Driver Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Driver's original mono mix is delivered by a perfectly adequate DTS-HD Master Audio Mono outing. Things get a bit crowded sounding in the big chase set pieces, where a glut of screeching tires, police sirens, and even occasional lines of dialogue tend to overlap each other in a bit of cacophony. The bulk of the film, however, offers clear dialogue and an excellent representation of Michael Small's ultra-cool score.

The Driver Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Alternate Opening (1080p; 3:20) provides unnecessary introductions to The Player, The Connection and The Cop. It's not hard to see why this was jettisoned.


• Trailer (480p; 2:26)


• Isolated Score. Michael Small's neatly dissonant score is presented via DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0. Some of those bizarre echoplex effects with the muted trumpet reminded me of Christopher Komeda's incredible work on Rosemary's Baby.

The Driver Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Driver has had a perhaps unexpected influence on subsequent films and filmmakers, as evidenced by homages to it in some Quentin Tarantino outings as well as the either intentionally or unintentionally similar Drive. This is not a film that will engender strong feelings of connection with the characters, as even Hill seems to be admitting by refusing to give them names. But the story is taut and compelling and Hill stages it all with a great deal of finesse. Dern is a standout as the conceited, obsessed cop, and O'Neal is surprisingly effective in an almost wordless role. This Blu-ray features great video and audio and comes Highly recommended.