Chucky P

My comparison of Drive to a Palahnuik novel was only half-thought out. Let me try to explain what I think I might have meant. Palahnuik's novels are, in my opinion, formulaic and somewhat stale. He can turn out a good sentence but his books are the books-that-people-who-don't-read read and are applauded for being real and gruesome and misanthropic when all that is happening is that the reader is being manipulated by their own cynicism (not a coincidence that Palahnuik's fans are mostly young males). Palahnuik relies on this, which is why his characters all begin to look the same. This bothers me because there is no development. It's flat characters saying insipid stuff to each other and we all clap our hands at how he captures the voice of a generation or some other bullshit.

Clearly, I do not find much of anything redeemable in Palahnuik's work (at least in the few books of his that I've read). This is not the case with Refn and Drive; so, the comparison doesn't really work. However, I think that I really just meant this film has a similar feel: it's the movie for people who don't like movies. They can talk about how it's violent, but so is real life, blah, blah. They are criminals, but they have a heart, didn't you see that slight eyebrow raise the timid Gos gave to Mulligan? Shut up, the movie is about a criminal mechanic who steals and kills and wears the same dumb jacket. He's very careful about getting caught unless it means taking off his blood soaked scorpion coat. Pretty people, hip music, blood, brains and veins. Cars!

Anyway, make of that what you will. I'll probably walk it all back tomorrow. Let me, again, stress that I did not hate the movie. It's genre film at it's best, maybe the crime movie equivalent of Antichrist. I was probably already predisposed to disliking this film anyway. Head to head, I'll take Cold Weather any day of the week.

*Also, I did enjoy the film adaptation of Fight Club. I liked Choke because of naked Britta, but that's probably the only reason.