Ryan Gosling stars as a Los Angeles wheelman for hire, stunt driving for movie productions by day and steering getaway vehicles for armed heists by night. Though a loner by nature, Driver can’t help falling in love with his beautiful neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan), a vulnerable young mother dragged into a dangerous underworld by the return of her ex-convict husband Standard (Oscar Isaac). After a heist intended to pay off Standard’s protection money spins unpredictably out of control, Driver finds himself driving defense for the girl he loves, tailgated by a syndicate of deadly serious criminals. But when he realizes that the gangsters are after more than the bag of cash in his trunk-that they’re coming straight for Irene and her son-Driver is forced to shift gears and go on offense.
The first car that is assigned to our guy, in “Drive,” is indeed a Chevy Impala, in numbing silver-gray. “No one will be looking at you,” he is told, and that’s the point. Though tuned and buffed under the hood, the Chevy remains a heroically dull machine, perhaps the least memorable chase weapon since Roy Scheider clambered into a Pontiac Ventura, the color of a very tired squirrel, in “The Seven-Ups” (1973). That model was even glummer than the Pontiac LeMans—who was kidding whom, with that name?—in which Gene Hackman raced against an Elevated train, two years earlier, in “The French Connection”; and both, of course, were nothing beside the gleaming flanks of the Mustang used in “Bullitt” (1968). If you want to be seen, like Steve McQueen, you sport your car as if it were a suit, tailor made to your skills. If you want to fade into the background, though, like the fellow in “Drive,” you get something you can steal and leave behind.