- If someone were searching for a bridge between the works of Jean-Pierre Melville and those of Michael Mann, they might very well look to Walter Hill's The Driver. Every bit as stylized as the works of Melville and Mann, The Driver's protagonist (Ryan O'Neal) embodies all of the isolation of Le Samourai's Jef Costello combined with the anger of Thief's Frank. The film he's in isn't nearly as good as those other two, but it's an interesting contribution to the existentialist crime genre that otherwise languished a bit through the 1970's.
- In this case, the anonymous Driver is the best getaway man in the business. He doesn't carry a gun -- unless he has to -- and doesn't participate directly in the robbery. I would say that evading the police is his specialty, but that doesn't really convey the way in which the Driver wields his car as a weapon. In some cases, this means a high-stakes game of chicken that the Driver always wins. In one particularly memorable and incredibly over-the-top scene, it means taking some questionable prospective employers on a hell ride through a parking garage. He's a man of few words, but his driving says a lot.
- Pursuing the Driver is the Detective, played brilliantly by Bruce Dern. Unlike the Driver, the Detective is a man of many words, most of which have to do with how great he thinks he is. The Detective has made it his business to catch "the cowboy that's never been caught," and he'll do anything to accomplish that goal. In fact, the Detective's methods are so questionable that I found myself wondering if this man, who operates primarily out of bars and unmarked vans, was really a detective at all. He casually strolls into the rooms of suspects to interrogate them and doesn't hesitate to beat up lowlifes to get information. In a scene taken almost directly from Le Samourai, he even marches into the penthouse suite of the Player (Isabelle Adjani) to ask some questions that carry a threat of blackmail behind them. The trouble is, the Detective never takes his own advice: "When you're talking, you're not thinking."
- While The Driver gets a lot of miles out of O'Neal and Dern, the latter of whom I've always considered to be one of the great underappreciated actors of his time, the rest of the film often feels a bit thin. On one hand, it features some truly terrific chase scenes that rank up there with those of The French Connection and Bullitt. On the other hand, the whole endeavor has none of the humanity that permeates the work of Melville and Mann, even if it shares a few similar themes. When characters in films like Le Samourai and Thief are dehumanized, the directors intend this to be viewed as a tragic outcome. Films like The Driver (and its recent progeny, Drive) seem to think that the dehumanization itself is the goal.
