By Joshua Cornelius

Mix equal parts of Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï’s reductive cool with the economic low-tech visual flourish of other auto films like Vanishing Point, and you’ll have distilled the essence of The Driver.  Even on first viewing, it’s readily apparent the unheralded impact the visual style of the film has had on everything from the “Grand Theft Auto” games to films like The Transporter, The Fast and the Furious and Death Proof (almost assuredly and admittedly a direct descendant of Hill’s work here).

Ryan O’ Neal takes a figurative back seat to the action as a man with no name, aka “The Driver”, a smoldering and stone faced protagonist who will drive your getaway car from the heist for a mere $10,000.  Bruce Dern is the pursuant known only as “The Detective” and the girl trapped between them is the ravishingly beautiful Isabelle Adjani, “The Player”.  This setup, while intentionally sparse, is more than enough of a skeleton to map the films many twists and turns onto.  While the performers acquit themselves admirably, it’s clear that the cars and the simplified plot are on display.

Hill pulls double duty as writer and director.  As in The Warriors, the filmmaker walks a fine line, choosing to temper the proceedings with a generally recognizable dose of humanity, allowing the pacing and sparse dialogue to imbue even these scant characters with a sense of purpose…. rather than to further embellish inherent themes of machismo and nihilism.  Ryan O’ Neal’s character bears more than a passing resemblance to the gruff and silent Jeff Costello of  Le Samouraï.  In whole or in part, it’s apparent that at some level, the character was modeled around Alain Delon’s performance in that film. Whether it was Hill or O’neal, regardless the film successfully achieves the audiences entirely unearned support of the melancholy protagonist (further echoed via Melville’s work with Delon in Le Cercle Rouge).

What sets The Driver apart from the myriad of stunt car films produced in the 70s has as much to do with cinematographer Philip Lathrop’s camera placement and muted lighting arrangements.  The staccato editing rhythms that punctuate these, often extended, driving scenes gives an incredible amount of weight to the proceedings.  At first I found myself underwhelmed by a sense of style that seemed at times to entirely let go the notion of visual storytelling, entirely necessary in a film where the protagonist delivers only 350 short words!  Intentionally or otherwise, expository scenes of dialogue, however brief, seem rough and unprepared.  The camera sits idly through simply lit shots, given only an occasional pan.  When coupled with inventive cinematography for stunt scenes, the film explodes.  If you’re thinking about the cinematography of Interiors mixed against Vanishing Point, you’re not far off.  It becomes apparent only then why the camera cannot move until the characters get into a car; Every bit of momentum must be put towards the speed of these hurtling chunks of metal.  This juxtaposition is at first jarring, and then entirely welcome, and kept me yearning for the next burst of speed.

The Driver is an easily overlooked gem in the catalog of Walter Hill, shot directly before his participation and around the same time as his involvement in films like The Warriors and Alien.  It may not stand tall amongst the greats of the decade, but that’s all to do with both O’Neal and Dern’s fall from grace.  Thirty years on, those elements stripped away, the film more than competes with it’s modern contemporaries. ✪