The Driver (1978)

The Driver is a professional. He’s the best at what he does. He won’t take a job if he doesn’t like it. He’ll never work with you again if you don’t follow his rules. He has no attachments. He gets the job done. He’s paid well for his services. He takes a job he shouldn’t have. He gets entangled with a woman. Things get complicated

If that plot synopsis sounds familiar that’s because The Driver (1978) was a clear inspiration for both Drive (2011) and Baby Driver (2017). I’d argue both of those later movies are better than The Driver, but certainly, it has its merits. The car chase sequences alone are worth the price of admission. Director Walter Hill uses every ounce of his relatively small budget in several automobile-heavy action sequences. They aren’t as stylish as the ones in Drive or Baby Driver but they do pack a punch.

Ryan O’Neal plays The Driver (none of the characters are given names in the film, they are named by their functions in the credits) as a man of few words, who keeps everything close to his chest. He won’t take a job if he feels it is too risky, or if he knows guns will be involved, yet he is not afraid to deal out violence when he feels it is needed. He’s being chased by The Detective (a snarling Bruce Dern), who sets up a trap for The Driver in which he forces three other cons (who are named Glasses, Teeth, and Fingers) to talk The Driver into doing a job with them. The idea is that The Detective will know all the ins and outs of the job and will be able to catch The Driver red-handed. The Driver recognizes it is a setup and refuses to have anything to do with it, but then basically The Detective dares him to do it and like Marty McFly in Back to the Future, our hero can’t back down when someone calls him a chicken.

There is a love interest, of sorts. She’s called The Player (Isabelle Adjani) and she was a witness to the first job we see in the film, but she refuses to name The Driver to The Detective. He paid her off and they do a little flirting, but not much more. There’s also The Connection (Ronee Blakley) who works as The Driver’s handler. But all of this is just a way for the film to give us another action sequence.

I don’t want to sell those scenes short. They really are terrifically staged. I really dug a scene in the middle where The Driver is showing off. He runs the car all around a big underground garage, running it in and out of cars and those big concrete pillars. Then he very strategically smashes into things knocking bits and pieces of the car off. There is something very down and dirty to the way Walter Hill films those scenes. Drive is sleek and noirish, and Baby Driver is set perfectly to pop songs, but The Driver shoots them like fight scenes – rugged and brutal.

Definitely a film worth seeking out.