Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

I can remember it like it was yesterday. A film about UFOs visiting earth called CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977) had been released and I wanted to see it. I was a believer in Unidentified Flying Objects back in 1977. My Poppa (grandfather) was visiting from Bend, Oregon with my Nanna (grandmother). Poppa offered to go to the movie with me. I sat through the film filled with wonder, loving the story and special effects. When the film was over, my Poppa and I walked out into the afternoon sunshine. He turned to me and said, "What was that all about?"

Close Encounters of the First Kind is a sighting. Close Encounters of the Second Kind is evidence. Closer Encounters of the Third Kind is contact. The film CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND was my first encounter with a young wunderkind director named Steven Spielberg.  I had tried to see Spielberg's previous work JAWS (1975) as I have chronicled before but my parents would have none of that. But they had no issue allowing me to see a film about man's first contact with extraterrestials. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS had such a profound affect on me that when my family and I moved back to Oregon from Massachusetts in 1996, I made us detour to the northeast Wyoming landmark Devil's Tower (featured prominently in CETK) to see where the spaceships landed. I saw no government base but plenty of ground squirrels and cows.

Spielberg's early films like JAWS and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND exhibited his promising technical prowess. But they were also very grounded and organic, showing a deep understanding of the family unit warts and all. His early heroes like Sheriff Brody (Roy Scheider) in JAWS, Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981), and Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS are funny, sort of brave, and vulnerable in the face of man eating sharks, head hunters, or huge spaceships. They're all adults grappling with their inner child.

I'm going to focus on the original, theatrical version of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, the version I saw with my grandfather in the theater and the definitive version.  Columbia Pictures and Spielberg would release two other versions. CETK: SPECIAL EDITION altered or deleted a few scenes and took the audience into the Mothership. My favorite addition was the UFO trackers finding the giant freighter Cotopaxi in the Gobi Desert that vanished en route from Charleston, South Carolina to Cuba in 1925. Then, Columbia released a DIRECTOR'S CUT that put back most of the original version and kept some of the Special Edition scenes, proving the original is probably the best version.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND begins with a trademark opening from writer/director Steven Spielberg that would become his signature. It's mysterious, breathtaking, and sets the tone for the rest of the film. A group of scientists led by Claude Lacombe (French director Francois Truffaut) and his interpreter/cartographer David Laughlin (Bob Balaban) arrive in the Sonoran desert of Mexico to find eight pristine World War II fighter planes known as Flight 19. The planes disappeared on a training mission off the Florida coast in 1945. So why are they in the Mexican desert three decades later? This is a close encounter of the second kind. Evidence. A close encounter of the first kind (sighting) occurs when a commercial airliner reports encountering a UFO over Indiana. The pilots decline to register the sighting.

In Muncie, Indiana, strange lights visit the farmhouse of Jillian Guiler (Melinda Dillon) and her son Barry (Cary Guffey). Electronic toys turn on by themselves. Barry runs off, chased by his mother. Across Indiana, the power grid ebbs and flows. Line man Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) is sent out to investigate a power outage in one of the counties. Roy has an alien encounter at a railroad crossing. He follows the lights to a ridge where he, Jillian, and many others watch three spacecraft fly by and disappear into the night skies. Roy tries to explain to his wife Ronnie (Teri Garr) what he saw but she's skeptical. This UFO encounter begins to affect him.

Roy and Jillian begin seeing a shape that means something to them. In shaving cream or mashed potatoes, Roy keeps trying to make a mountain, an image left with him from his brief alien probe (if they had Google back in 1977 he would have found that image in seconds). Lacombe and his team travel to India where a village had an encounter with visitors from the sky, singing the same musical motif over and over again. Lacombe and Laughlin figure out the notes are actually map coordinates. The aliens are signaling they wish to make contact in northeast Wyoming.

The UFOs return to Indiana and steal little Barry away from his mother Jillian. Jillian goes to the government about her kidnapped son. At a press conference, the Air Force debunks the UFO theories while the government creates a fake railroad car disaster to block off Devil's Tower where the UFOs plan to land. Roy sees the news footage of Devil's Tower and realizes that's the image he's been seeing in his mind. Roy leaves his family and drives to Wyoming where he meets up with Jillian again. They manage to escape Lacombe and General "Wild Bill" Walsh (Warren J. Kemmerling) and climb close to Devil's Tower to view the first contact between extraterrestials and humans. The giant mothership arrives, unloading dozens of people "kidnapped" by the aliens including the WWII pilots of Flight 19 and little Barry. Lacombe offers Roy the chance to be one of the first humans to return with the aliens to their planet.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND was only Spielberg's third feature film (he had directed episodes of TVs NIGHT GALLERY and the well received 1971 TV movie DUEL). It's a film filled with exuberance and bravura as the youthful Spielberg continues to find his cinematic footing. It's not a perfect film. The middle section with Roy's breakdown as he tries to make sense of the mountain image in his head runs a little long (hence the deletion of much of that sequence in the SPECIAL EDITION version). But it's Spielberg realizing that story is as important as special effects. We need to be totally on board to Roy's almost breakdown (hence the return of the full scene in the Director's Cut).

Whether the aliens are good or evil in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND is kept a secret for most of the film, Spielberg keeping his audience in suspense. At times, they seem playful and curious.  But when they return and kidnap little Barry, we're not sure what their intentions are, John Williams score terrifying and frightening. Probe? Autopsy? Child slavery? Luckily, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS is about the wonder of making contact with beings from another world, uniting and exploring for a common good.  Barry will be reunited with his mother Jillian, none the worse for wear. Visual Effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull (2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY) brings Spielberg's vision to reality with spaceships we've never seen before.

Speilberg draws influence from some old masters in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND as well as hints at future films he will make.  The overlapping dialogue of the air traffic controllers has the feel of dialogue in a Robert Altman movie like MASH (1970).  Roy and Jillian's escape toward Devil's Tower (a National Monument) reminds me of Cary Grant and Eve Marie Saint in Alfred Hitchcock's NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959) as they stumbled around Mt. Rushmore. Even John Williams's score during that scene hearkens to Hitchcock's favorite composer Bernard Herrmann.  And Spielberg gets to stage a huge scene at a train station a la David Lean (DR. ZHIVAGO) with thousands of extras as Roy and Jillian reunite in Wyoming.

Spielberg would revisit extraterrestials and humans co-mingling on a smaller, more intimate scale with his E.T. THE EXTRATERRESTIAL in 1982.  Later, an older more cynical Spielberg would remake H.G. Welles tale of bad aliens wreaking destruction on earth in WAR OF THE WORLDS (2005). The scenes of toy monkeys, vacuum cleaners, and other electronic gadgets turning on by themselves (with help from the aliens) in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS is a harbinger of some similar set pieces in the Spielberg produced ghost story POLTERGEIST (also 1982) directed by Tobe Hooper (with some uncredited direction by Spielberg himself) especially the clown sequence and some other mischief by the angry poltergeists.

Disney's PINOCHHIO shows up several times in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS. Roy's toy train crashes into a Pinocchio toy early in the film. Later, Roy wants to take his kids to see PINOCCHIO (1940)instead of playing Goofy Golf. Roy and Spielberg are still boys like Pinocchio who are not ready to be men just yet. Composer John Williams will even insert a small riff of 'When You Wish Upon A Star' from PINOCCHIO  as the scientists gaze at the Mothership which itself resembles a colorful, twinkling star.

Richard Dreyfuss catapulted to fame with Spielberg's JAWS but CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND further established him as a rising star.  He exudes awe and astonishment as Roy Neary but also sorrow and pain when his wife and kids leave him. Dreyfuss would have a great run winning an Academy Award for Best Actor in Herbert Ross's THE GOODBYE GIRL (also 1977) and starring in the successful STAKEOUT films with Emilio Estavez in the late 80s/early 90s.

I don't know if it was a Hitchcock blonde thing but Spielberg cast blondes at the beginning of his career. Goldie Hawn in THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS (1974), Lorraine Gary in JAWS, and later Dee Wallace in E.T. THE EXRATERRESTIAL. For CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND he went with two blondes. Melinda Dillon as Jillian and Teri Garr as Roy's wife Ronnie Neary.  Dillon and Garr were sought after actresses at the time.  Dillon appeared in SLAP SHOT (also 1977) and ABSENCE OF MALICE (1981) both with Paul Newman. Dillon will forever be remembered as Ralphie's Mother in Bob Clark's A CHRISTMAS STORY (1983). Garr showed her comedic talents in Mel  Brooks YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974) and played the jilted girlfriend of Dustin Hoffman in Sydney Pollack's TOOTSIE (1982). In CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, Garr has a more dramatic part, trying to hold her family together as her husband Roy appears to be losing his mind.

What inspiration by Spielberg who was leading this American New Wave movement of young American directors (like Coppola and Scorsese) in the 70s to cast one of the leaders of the French New Wave film movement of the 60's director Francois Truffaut as research scientist Claude Lacombe. Lacombe is as child-like as Roy in his search for the truth as he crosses the globe following the extraterrestials path and signs. Like Truffaut, Spielberg shows great skill for directing children whether it's Cary Guffey as little Barry in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND or Henry Thomas in E.T. THE EXTRATERRESTIAL or young Christian Bale in EMPIRE OF THE SUN (1987).

Spielberg also shows a knack for casting actors who look like nerdy scientists and government officials. Bob Balaban as Lacombe's interpreter Laughlin, J. Patrick McNamara as the Project Leader, and Merrill Connally as the Team Leader are all uniformly square looking and perfect.  And look for familiar faces Lance Henricksen (ALIENS) and Carl Weathers (ROCKY) in small roles in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND.

After hits like JAWS and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, the world was Spielberg's oyster.  But as often happens when success comes quickly (see Michael Cimino), Spielberg would hit a bump in the road in 1979 with his next project, the over budget, very loud, out of control World War II comedy 1941 about an imagined Japanese attack on the west coast of the United States. It would be a bomb and nearly sink Spielberg.  But George Lucas would step in and hire Spielberg to direct an idea he had based on the adventure serials he loved as a kid called RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981). Spielberg would learn from Lucas how to be economical and practical and stay on budget and the rest is history.Spielberg would never look back and go on an incredible run of blockbuster hits.

When I decided to review CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, I had no idea that this would be its 40th Anniversary in 2017.  As I said at the beginning, it seems just like yesterday that I went to watch it with my grandfather.  Like STAR WARS (1977), CLOSE ENCOUNTERS was another joyous film watching experience for me.  Watching it again, that feeling hasn't changed.  I guess the only that that has changed is my belief in UFOs.  With all our camera phones and dashboard cameras and Go-Pros, no one has been able to capture a credible photo of a flying saucer or large bulbous-headed alien. I want to believe there is life out there. And filmmakers want to believe it too.  More recent films like INDEPENDENCE DAY (1996) and ARRIVAL (2016) were inspired by CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND and continue our fascination with the possibility of alien life.  The working title for CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND was WATCH THE SKIES. I guess all we can do is continue to watch the skies. And wish upon a star that someday we will meet visitors from another planet or galaxy.

The Driver (1978) and Drive (2011)

When it comes to heist films, the getaway driver usually gets the short end of the stick. Like a drummer in a rock band, the role of the getaway driver is overlooked. The flashy parts go to the brains of the operation or the muscle or the trigger man.  The driver is often portrayed as a stooge, discarded quickly after the robbery is pulled off like in Sam Peckinpah's THE GETAWAY (1972). Poor Bo Hopkins. He doesn't even make it back to the hideout after the bank robbery before Al Lettieri shoots him.

Two films have given the getaway driver his due: Walter Hill's THE DRIVER (1978) and Nicholas Winding Refn's DRIVE (2011).  Although not a remake (but definitely inspired by), DRIVE is like a first cousin once removed to THE DRIVER.  THE DRIVER is gritty and urban. DRIVE is slick and glossy. Both films are set in Los Angeles (makes sense with all the highways and streets available in the City of Angels). And ironically, both leading men who play drivers are named Ryan: Ryan O'Neal in THE DRIVER and Ryan Gosling in DRIVE.

It's not surprising that writer/director Walter Hill came up with the idea and made THE DRIVER.  Hill wrote the screenplay for THE GETAWAY which starred Steve McQueen.  Hill must have remembered he dispatched the getaway driver early in that film.  Without a good getaway driver, the whole robbery could be over before it started if the driver's not there on time. He needs to know all the escape and backup routes. He has to be adept at handling a car while chased by cops or double-crossing partners or mobsters. Director Hill even borrows (or steals) using a similar train station locker, bait and switched locker keys, and pursuit on a train scene in THE DRIVER that he wrote for THE GETAWAY.

Ryan O'Neal has no name in THE DRIVER. He's just the Driver (although Bruce Dern likes to call him Cowboy). The film opens with the Driver waiting for two bag men to emerge from a casino they have just robbed.  A group of casino patrons including a woman known as the Player (French actress Isabelle Adjani) watch as the Driver peels away with the two crooks.  The Driver exhibits his skills as he avoids five police cars in pursuit.  But he's done with the bag men.  They were late exiting the casino almost resulting in the Driver getting apprehended.

In pursuit of the Driver is the Detective (Bruce Dern). The Detective is obsessed with catching him. He brings the Player in to ID the Driver at a line-up but she won't give him up (the Driver has paid her off to be his silent alibi).  So the Detective tries to set up the Driver, extorting a hot head criminal named Glasses (Joseph Walsh) and his accomplice Teeth (Rudy Ramos) to hire the Driver to help them rob a bank so the Detective can catch him after the fact. Glasses reaches out to the Connection (Ronee Blakley) to contact the Driver about the job.  The Connection meets with the Driver but he doesn't want to work with shooters (aka bank robbers with guns). The Detective challenges the Driver, dares him to pull off another heist.

The Driver takes the bait. But he doesn't want trigger happy Teeth to join them.  So Glasses and the Kid (Frank Bruno) pull off the job.  The Driver takes them to a warehouse picked by Glasses but away from the Detective. The Driver smells a set up.  The Driver shoots Glasses before Glasses can return the favor. The Driver takes the stolen cash and puts it in a locker at the train station. He needs to launder the hot money. He contacts the Player. She can help him change the stolen money for new money.

The Player sends one of her accomplices the Exchange Man (Denny Macko) to switch bags and keys with her. The Exchange Man hops on a train, pursued by the Detective. Teeth steals the Player's purse with the correct bus locker key.  The Driver and the Player chase Teeth through the dark urban streets culminating in Teeth crashing his car in a large warehouse. The Driver retrieves the key.  When they return to the train station, the Detective and a gaggle of cops are waiting.  Will the Detective catch the Driver red handed this time?

Hill's THE DRIVER takes place in a stylized world.  No one has a first or last name. It's just a description: the Driver, the Detective, the Connection, or Glasses. The city is never named but it's all downtown Los Angeles (director Hill would use many of the same locations in his 1984 retro action film STREETS OF FIRE).  The Driver never appears to have any other type of job or skill besides his driving.  The Detective doesn't appear to have a supervisor or follow any laws or rules (although his partner Red Plainclothesman played by Matt Clark does have a conscience and would like to see the Detective fail). For the Detective, it's all a game.  You either win or lose. The Detective thinks he's on the winning team.

The Driver does have a set of rules that he follows (as does Gosling's Driver). The crooks he drives for need to be on time. A few seconds late could get the Driver arrested or worse killed  The Driver doesn't like gun happy robbers.  He's probably seen THE GETAWAY himself. The Driver has his code but inevitably he breaks it, risking his life and livelihood for one last big payoff. In breaking his code, the Driver endangers his very existence.

THE DRIVER is all machismo and muscle, much like the cars the Driver uses. In an impressive scene, the Driver literally wrecks a Mercedes Benz to prove to a skeptical Glasses he's good at driving. The Driver winds through a parking garage, scraping fenders off walls, breaking doors off their hinges as Glasses and his crew scream in fear.  Ryan O'Neal (BARRY LYNDON) and Bruce Dern (BLACK SUNDAY) are excellent as adversaries.  Cat and mouse. Their battle is with words and posturing, not fists. The Detective never chases the Driver once in a car. Even the female leads are masculine in THE DRIVER. French actress Isabelle Adjani (NOSFERATU and THE STORY OF ADELE H) and Ronee Blakley (NASHVILLE) could almost be male characters.  No gowns or dresses for these women. Adjani barely blinks as she bounces around with O'Neal in his various getaway cars (okay she screams once when they're shot at). Blakely as the Connection gives up the Driver's plans to Teeth at gunpoint but takes a bullet like a man for her betrayal.

Ryan Gosling also plays a getaway driver with no name (although Bryan Cranston calls him "the Kid") who lives by a code in the more recent DRIVE (2011), directed by Nicholas Winding Refn and written by Hossein Amini based on a novel by James Sallis . I had heard a rumor several years ago that French director Luc Besson (LA FEMME NIKITA) was going to remake THE DRIVER. Instead, it turned out to be Danish director Refn (BRONSON and VAHALLA RISING) who made DRIVE inspired by THE DRIVER but not a remake. Refn and Gosling would later make ONLY GOD FORGIVES (2013) set in Bangkok with Gosling this time as a drug smuggler.

Like the opening of THE DRIVER, DRIVE begins with the Driver (Gosling) waiting for two hooded men to break into a warehouse. "There's a hundred-thousand streets in this city. You don't need to know the route. You give me a time and a place, I give you a five minute window. Anything happens in that five minutes and I'm yours. No matter what. Anything happens a minute either side of that and you're on your own. Do you understand?" The Driver evades a couple of police cars and a police helicopter before ditching the hooded men and the car in a sports arena parking lot as a Lakers basketball game ends. But the Driver does more than drive.  He's also a stunt driver for movies and he works as a mechanic for his handler/stunt coordinator/exploiter Shannon (Bryan Cranston). Shannon dreams of owning a stock car with the Driver behind the wheel.  He goes to a mid-level gangster and former B-movie producer Bernie Rose (Albert Brooks) and borrows three hundred grand to do it.

But the Driver's world turns upside down when he falls for his neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan) who's raising her young son Benicio (Kaden Leos) while his father Standard Gabriel (Oscar Isaac) finishes up a prison sentence. When Standard is released from prison, he promises to make amends. But he's soon beat up by a vicious hoodlum/pimp Cook (James Biberi) who wants Standard to rob a pawn shop to pay off protection money that Standard owes Cook.  The Driver decides to help Standard pull off the robbery, hoping this final heist will settle Standard's debts so Irene and Benicio can live safely.

Standard and his accomplice Blanche (Christina Hendricks) rob the San Fernando pawn shop while the Driver waits in the parking lot. But the robbery goes awry. Standard is shot and killed.  A second car shows up and chases the Driver and Blanche. They hold up in a motel, waiting for Cook but two killers show up. Cook and his boss Nino (Ron Perlman) have double-crossed the Driver, trying to rob the initial robbery to hide Nino's intent to steal from an East Coast mobster who owned the pawn shop. The Driver manages to dispatch the hitmen but he's injured. The Driver goes to Shannon to find a doctor to patch him up before extracting revenge.

The Driver finds Cook at a strip joint, breaking the pimp's fingers with a hammer until he tells him who ordered the double cross. Bernie learns of Nino's mistake and vows to clean up his mess. Only Shannon and the Driver can pin the crime on them. The Driver chases down Nino next while Bernie takes care of the unlucky Shannon. The Driver tries to give the one million dollars to Irene but she refuses.  The Driver and Bernie Rose meet at a Chinese restaurant to agree to a truce and an exchange but like everything in DRIVE, even that plan doesn't work out well for either men.

DRIVE is ultimately about a group of people on the fringe of normal society who have bad luck and broken dreams: a B film producer turned gangster, a stuntman/mechanic falling in love, a sweet waitress with bad boyfriend choices, a dreamer who can't buy a break, an ex-con trying to go straight. Shannon is a father figure to the Driver but he exploits the kid as well. The fact that stunt coordinator Shannon has a limp (the result of a broken pelvis courtesy of a deal gone sour) is not a good sign. The Driver is just a younger version of Shannon, another dreamer with bad luck.

Like Ryan O'Neal's Driver, Gosling's Driver is also a loner who follows his own personal code. He gives his customers a short window to complete their illegal deed.  If that deed runs past five minutes, they're on their own. With his racing gloves, tooth pick, and Scorpion emblem on his gold jacket (a nice reference to the Scorpion and the Frog fable that comes true later in the film), Gosling's Driver is a free spirit seemingly with a sweet heart.  But also like O'Neal, Gosling's Driver can be violent and vicious when provoked.  He lives life one day at a time.   But he breaks his code, trying to be a knight in shining armor, to protect Irene and Benicio's future.  This fairy tale has a bad ending. He makes a deal to drive without his mentor Shannon's involvement. This choice will have dire consequences for everyone.

Like the mentor/protégé relationship between Shannon and the Driver, gangster Bernie Rose and his partner Nino also have an interesting relationship, mirroring the Driver and Shannon.  They like to bust each other's balls but they're a team.  But then Nino tries to pull off a deal on his own, stealing from a East Coast gangster who Nino feels doesn't respect him, not consulting Bernie on the heist.  Like the Driver, Nino's actions have devastating results for him and his partner Bernie.

European director Refn brings a freshness to DRIVE making the over-filmed city of Los Angeles look new and unique.  One of my favorite new composers Cliff Martinez (CONTAGION) provides the pulsating musical score. Like directors Scorsese and Tarantino, Refn gives us brief, shocking moments of violence. A fork in a pimp's eye, a hammer breaking a pimp's fingers, the Driver stomping on the face of a hitman. Grisly moments but he doesn't linger, the point made in one or two quick shots. Refn also gives us brief flashes of happiness: the Driver spending the day with Irene and Benicio or Standard's 'Welcome Home' party.  But these feel good scenes are fleeting.

DRIVE'S cast is impressive with an array of excellent actors playing roles they're not typically cast as. Ryan Gosling as the Driver continues his stint of bouncing between tough action films like DRIVE and GANGSTER SQUAD (2013) and comedies or musicals like CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE (2011) and LA LA LAND (2016).  Gosling plays his Driver like O'Neal's with very little dialogue and plenty of smoldering stares. British actress Carey Mulligan (FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD) surprises as the angelic Irene.  The biggest surprise is comedian Albert Brooks as the brutal boss Bernie Rose.  Brooks is better know for comedies like LOST IN AMERICA (1985) and BROADCAST NEWS (1987).  But he hinted he could play darker characters with his performance as a white collar criminal in Steven Soderbergh's OUT OF SIGHT (1998).

Rounding out the excellent cast is Bryan Cranston as the Driver's handler and father figure Shannon. Cranston, also know for comedy early in his career (TV's MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE), shocked audiences when he revealed his darker side in the  breakthrough AMC series BREAKING BAD (2008 - 2013) as teacher turned meth maker Walter White.  In DRIVE, Cranston's Shannon is the most heartbreaking sympathetic character, at heart a good guy that can't get out of the way of his dreams and ultimate bad luck. Oscar Isaac as Irene's husband Standard, another down on his luck character, was the young hot up and coming actor when DRIVE came out appearing in small roles with Leonardo DiCaprio in BODY OF LIES (2008) and Russell Crowe in ROBIN HOOD (2010). Isaac has now exploded into leading man roles since with the Coen Brothers INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS (2013) and as Rebel fighter Poe Dameron in STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS (2015).  Ron Perlman (HELLBOY) as Nino and Christina Hendricks (TVs MAD MEN) also play pivotal supporting roles.

Although both THE DRIVER and DRIVE are about getaway drivers and crime, neither film has non-stop car chases.  Both films have two major car chase set pieces but they are effective scenes. Both films open with a car chase, exhibiting each Driver's skills.  Walter Hill puts the camera inside and outside the car in THE DRIVER giving it a very visceral feel.  Nicholas Winding Refn shoots the second car chase in DRIVE much like Peter Yates BULLITT (1968) with the camera speeding alongside the two cars in pursuit of one another as they hopscotch around other cars. Steve McQueen would have been proud (ironically director Hill wrote THE DRIVER with McQueen in mind. McQueen felt he had already done enough car chase films and declined). So Ryan O'Neal got the part.

Both films prove that a good getaway driver doesn't have to just drive fast either.  They have to drive smartly. At times the Driver's best choice is to stay put. Turn off the headlights and hide under a bridge or behind a parked truck until the police have gone by. THE DRIVER and DRIVE are excellent case studies for focusing on one key individual of a crime.  And our fascination of fast cars and the getaway driver has not gone away.  This summer Edgar Wright's BABY DRIVER (2017) is released about another young getaway driver named Baby who teams up with criminals to pull off a heist while falling in love with a waitress. Sounds like Wright has seen both THE DRIVER and DRIVE. So fasten your seatbelts and enjoy two similar yet different takes on the life of a getaway driver.