Every day, Watch This offers staff recommendations inspired by a new movie coming out that week. This week: Fast & Furious 6 inspires us to look back on other vehicular action movies.
The Driver (1978)
Stripped to its barest neo-noir essentials, The Driver is all fatalistic cool, stoic professionalism, and tire-screeching auto mayhem—a genre vehicle that, like its eponymous Driver (Ryan O’Neal), is defined by its expertly modulated action. Walter Hill’s 1978 film is a work of quiet attitude and breakneck road rage, paying homage to Robert Bresson and Jean-Pierre Melville (in particular, Le Samouraï). Its portrait of O’Neal’s expressionless getaway wheelman reveals a sandy-haired hunk in a blazer and open-collared blue shirt whose life is driven by an unwavering insistence on performing his job on his own terms. Hill introduces Driver emerging from the depths of a parking garage before stealing a Ford and blazing off to a heist, where he’s spotted by gambling beauty The Player (Isabelle Adjani) and is forced to evade cops in a chase that Hill shoots with a blistering mixture of front- and rear-POV shots, squealing rubber on asphalt, and close-ups of O’Neal’s blank countenance.