The Driver 1978 is not quite the original Drive from 2011

  Blender Dumbass
October 13, 2025

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A lot of people say that Nicolas Winding Refn's 2011 film Drive is a remake of 1978 film The Driver by Walter Hill. And to some extent it is true. Both are about a getaway driver. And both drivers are these tough, melancholic characters played by a guy who's first name is Ryan. But that seems to be about it.

The Driver is an action film. It has scenes of drama. But they are there to setup up stakes and tension for the inevitable big action scene. In Drive Refn is almost not interested in the action itself. Yes he shoots it and he executes it rather well, but he is more interested in the drama of it all, rather than the action.

Both film start from a get-away operation. In both films we get a Ryan played main character without a name. In Drive it is Ryan Gosling and in The Driver it is Ryan O'Neal. And on the back seat we get two unnamed goons that just robbed something.

Refn shoots his get-away scene entirely from the perspective of the people inside the car. He focuses on the tension of it all. And not on the action scene excitement. Walter Hill gives a tense, but ultimately intense action scene with a lot of very cool car stunts on display. The two scenes share one moment, where the Ryan character stops in a dark shaded area, with the lights off, to try to hide from the cops, which ultimately doesn't work. But that is about it.

After the get-away scene the films diverge drastically. If in Drive the main character finds a girl and tries to build a relationship with her, just to get sidelined by her husband that returns from prison. And then decides to help the husband to do a heist to save the family ( because he loves the girl ), which ultimately goes wrong. In The Driver the main plot is about a cop character ( Bruce Dern ) who is trying to catch our driver, but ultimately fails every-time. He knows that the driver is a get-away driver, he just never has enough evidence to put him away. And so he wants to create those evidence, by staging a bank robbery. This is so much not the same plot.

There is no love interest. There is no hidden emotional core to the driver. Apart from maybe that one girl who he helped with money by giving her a job to provide him with an alibi. She becomes intertwined in his heist toward the end of the film. And they drive together like as if they were boyfriend and girlfriend. But they aren't. They're just kind of in the car together. That's it.

Drive on the other hand develops the relationship to the breaking point. They do seem awkward, like the two characters in The Driver, but they eventually do share a kiss. The one kiss, that comes immediately before the driver unveils to her his true nature, which makes him unable to see her again. And yet the core of the plot, the core of the movie is their "love". He gets in trouble trying to help a husband of his girlfriend, because he loves her that much. It is absurd and goes against the tough guy persona of the driver. And that is what Refn was interested in.

Refn does use some stylistic decisions from The Driver in Drive. He literally remakes one of the shots. Where the bad guy is holding a woman down, trying to extort from her the information about the main character. In Drive the one that does that is the driver himself, making the film that much more complex thematically. And then the part when the bad guy softly rapes her mouth with his gun ( not penis, you pervert, his actual metal gun ) Refn remakes this with a knife instead in his other movie The Neon Demon. Where the girl is a literal underage teenager and the rapist guy is played by Keanu Reeves ( which begs a psycho-sexual analysis, but not in this review ).

To some extent the direction of Walter Hill in The Driver is spot on perfect. The movie is not over-directed like his Streets of Fire. He is not going for complex shots. And some shots during the action scenes are on a fucking tripod. Yet the movie is very well made. And the action is fucking good. The car sequences are absolutely amazing.

The writing, also done by Walter Hill, is strange. The plotting is interesting, and yet some of it feels a bit loose. It is like, he is playing games with the audience. For example there is a whole subplot about the guy who brought the money. It is technically important, and removing this subplot would create a sort of thematic plot hole. But it is not as important as how much the movie spends time on it. Like for a decent chunk of the film, this new character we never seen before becomes the main character of the movie. And he has a whole set piece all about him. And while it is a great sequence. And the stuff that eventually happens there gives some needed information for the end to feel less shitty. That is basically it.

And even though the script feels a bit weird, I wouldn't say it is bad. Maybe even I would say that this strangeness, those little scenes that are different, those little character quarks that are unique, all of that makes the film feel rather unpredictable. And that is a good thing. Even though, for this movie, it required throwing away some screen-writing logic.

Happy Hacking!!!

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  Blender Dumbass c:0


Completely unrelated so I'll stick it in this comment. Luc Besson was trying to produce a remake of this film before Refn. Which is interesting. In the end another director who now begs a psycho-sexual analysis Edgar Wright made a similar movie Baby Driver stating that The Driver was a major influence. And Quentin Tarantino also said that various little moments in his movies were references to specifically this film.

... replies ( 1 )

  Troler c:1



@blenderdumbass This warrants a question, what ties that Nicolas Winding Refn to Luc Besson. The Incal for instance, since it relates to The Fifth Element.

Reply

  Troler c:1

... c:0

  Blender Dumbass c:0


Completely unrelated so I'll stick it in this comment. Luc Besson was trying to produce a remake of this film before Refn. Which is interesting. In the end another director who now begs a psycho-sexual analysis Edgar Wright made a similar movie Baby Driver stating that The Driver was a major influence. And Quentin Tarantino also said that various little moments in his movies were references to specifically this film.

@blenderdumbass This warrants a question, what ties that Nicolas Winding Refn to Luc Besson. The Incal for instance, since it relates to The Fifth Element.

... replies ( 1 )

  Blender Dumbass c:2



@Troler You can read the movies The Driver and Drive as movies about an incel character. In the first he doesn't actually get the girl. He just kind of drives with her in the car together. And in Drive he almost gets the girl, but he cannot take it when she has a husband, and his defense mechanism causes him to get into trouble.

And I already explained in a review about the first Luc Besson film, incelhood is strongly related to rape fantasies.

Reply

  Blender Dumbass c:2

... c:1

  Troler c:1


c:0

@blenderdumbass This warrants a question, what ties that Nicolas Winding Refn to Luc Besson. The Incal for instance, since it relates to The Fifth Element.

@Troler You can read the movies The Driver and Drive as movies about an incel character. In the first he doesn't actually get the girl. He just kind of drives with her in the car together. And in Drive he almost gets the girl, but he cannot take it when she has a husband, and his defense mechanism causes him to get into trouble.

And I already explained in a review about the first Luc Besson film, incelhood is strongly related to rape fantasies.

Reply