I just saw "Drive" starring Ryan Gosling and that insipid, boyish British chick with the 'poor-me' eyes all the critics wet themselves over (Carey Madigan or something like that). The action scenes and violence are so slow paced that they threaten to put people to sleep, and there are few enough of them (and late enough in the movie that you are in grave danger of falling asleep and missing them) that the rest of the film is even more soporific by comparison.

The trailers promise "The Transporter" with acting. The movie delivers pretty much all the scenes from the trailer but slowed down and spaced out with long pregnant pauses as characters look at one another silently. Most of the film consists of Gosling staring off into space wordlessly, and the female lead staring at someone like she's about to cry. Bryan Cranston is good enough in his role as a sort of mentor-figure to Gosling, except they don't really interact enough for that to accurately describe their relationship. Gosling doesn't interact much with anyone or anything. Albert Brooks does that obnoxious and annoyingly smug and superior role he does so well, and Ron Perlman should have filmed this between takes of Sons of Anarchy, since he's pretty much a Jewish Clay Morrow with less guts. Like Cranston, they are in the film only briefly, and kid with almost no lines appears to have more footage than they do. Christina Hendricks is also adequate, though she is in it even less, and has maybe two lines and a brief conversation. It leads one to believe that these actors were all hired as cheaply as possible and were limited in the amount of time they could be showed, or else the makers of the film have enough connections to trade on that they were able to obtain the services of such talented second-tier performers for relatively small roles, despite the wretched material.

The gore is gratuitous and excessive in the two or three scenes featuring it, and combined with the pacing, lighting and leaden dialogue suggests some sort of homage or rip-off effort of what the 70s called action movies. Due to a blatantly obvious and ham-fisted bit of symbolism (the scorpion logo on Gosling's jacket) that was probably meant to pass as "deep" or "visual" or some other buzzword beloved of critics and film students, I strongly suspect this is some sort of student or enthusiast's amateurish attempt to be artistic in his imitation of that style.

Really, I strongly suggest staying home from this one. I went because my father and sister were going. She is a Ryan Gosling fan, and he saw "The Notebook" last night, so they were both susceptible when I mentioned that he had a new "action" movie out this week. Unfortunately, I was wrong. He only was appearing in this turd. And now it's stuck in my head! I'm writing short, terse sentences for most of this review, dammit! It's how they talk in the film, and until I shake it out of my brain, I'm stuck framing thoughts the same way, like when I read a book after watching a film set in England or Ancient Rome or Germany or something, and all the characters in the book suddenly have British accents in my mind. That last sentence was more complex. I think I may be getting over it. Gah. Just, avoid this thing. It's either going to be a flop, or get critically acclaimed, in which case you'll have plenty of time when they re-release it to capitalize on the Oscar buzz if you're curious as to what the fuss is about.

And to think Breaking Bad is on right now. I could be watching Cranston in something good, instead of this stupid thing.

By the way, every film I have seen Carey whatsherface in, she has played the love interest the movie thinks is good and desirable, and whose loss or gain is worth the hero changing his entire lifestyle around. Setting aside the fact that her very appearance implies the male hero is a pedophile (there was a scene where she bent over in a lowish-cut shirt and the lack of any difference was noticeable to all three of us), there is almost always a very good reason to NOT pursue a relationship with her character. These reasons range from "She's an obnoxious, full-of-herself, sanctimonious political extremist who makes Gordon Gekko the sympathetic member of her family when she gets on his case" through "she's married to a not-bad guy and has a kid with him (after apparently trapping him in marriage by lying about her age and getting pregnant)" all the way up to "Keira Knightly is interested in the hero as well." Any one of those is more than sufficient reasons to stay away from her character, yet she keeps getting cast with rave reviews for her single facial expression, and we are supposed to believe she is really worth walking away from a multimillion dollar lifestyle or getting involved in risky-yet-boring car chases to make her stop whimpering. Also, her characters are always so passive and weak that she seems to rely on pregnancy to get into or sustain relationships in almost everything she's been in (this, Wall Street 2, and something else my sister described to me afterwards wherein she's pregnant with Susan Sarandon's grandkid). In a way, she's symptomatic of this whole wretched film, because of the sheer lack of interest or entertainment value, that seems to be on the screen mainly so film snobs can feel superior to the rest of us because we are not enjoying it.