The Driver

The Driver is a 1978 American neo-noir[5] crime thriller film written and directed by Walter Hill. It stars Ryan O'Neal, Bruce Dern and Isabelle Adjani. O'Neal stars as The Driver, a getaway driver for robberies, whose exceptional talent has prevented him from being caught. After another escape from the police, a detective (Dern) tries to catch the driver by promising pardons to a gang if they help to convict him in a set-up robbery. The Driver seeks help from The Player to mislead the detective.

For other uses, see The Driver (disambiguation).
The Driver
Theatrical release poster
Directed byWalter Hill
Produced byLawrence Gordon
Written byWalter Hill
Starring
Music byMichael Small
CinematographyPhilip H. Lathrop
Edited by
Production
company
Distributed by20th Century Fox
Release date
  • July 28, 1978 (1978-07-28)
Running time
91 minutes[1]
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$4 million[2]
Box office$4.9 million[3]
1,102,183 admissions (France)[4]

20th Century Fox released The Driver on July 28, 1978. The film was a box office disappointment in the United States but performed better overseas. It initially received negative reviews but has become one of Hill's most popular films. Film directors like Quentin Tarantino, Nicolas Winding Refn and Edgar Wright have cited The Driver as a major influence on their films.

Plot

The Driver is a quiet, enigmatic man who steals cars to use as getaway vehicles in robberies around Los Angeles. He is known among fellow criminals for his high price, commensurate with his skill. He has also gained notoriety among police, particularly the volatile Detective, who has become obsessed with capturing The Driver, who he refers to as "Cowboy".

The Driver pulls a job at a casino, but his co-conspirators are late to reach him, causing him to be seen by several bystanders, including The Player. She is brought in by The Detective to identify him, but is paid off to deny seeing him. The Driver meets The Player at her apartment to pay her, but they are interrupted by The Detective, who threatens her and alludes to her criminal history.

Frustrated at failing to capture The Driver, The Detective sets up an illegal sting. He offers two captured criminals – Glasses and Teeth – a deal: pull a bank heist, hire The Driver, and deliver him to the police. In return, they will not be arrested for either crime. The two seek out The Driver via The Connection, his middleman and fence. The Driver initially refuses to work with the men due to his dislike of guns, but agrees to meet with them. When his driving prowess is questioned, he systematically wrecks the criminals' car, then fights with Teeth, defeating him. Unable to convince The Driver to pull the job, The Detective confronts The Driver at his rented room, taunting him and challenging him to a 'game' between them. The Driver agrees to take part in the job on the condition that his fee is doubled, and that Teeth does not take part.

During the heist, Glasses kills his partner and successfully escapes with The Driver. However, Glasses does not bring him to The Detective – instead, he plans to kill The Driver and make off with the money. The Driver surprises him with a gun, killing him and taking the money. The Driver stashes the money in a locker at Union Station. He meets with The Connection, who agrees to launder the dirty money. He then meets with The Player, enlisting her to help with retrieving the clean money. Meanwhile, Teeth, who has discovered Glasses dead, interrogates The Connection at gunpoint, killing her once she reveals The Driver's plans.

The Player heads to the train station, meeting with the Exchange Man. He stashes the clean money in an empty locker, then boards a train with the dirty money. Unbeknownst to them, the station is being watched by the police. The Exchange Man is followed on board by The Detective, who kills him in a shootout. Meanwhile, Teeth confronts The Player, stealing her purse containing the key to the locker containing the clean money. Teeth and his driver are chased by The Driver and The Player. The chase culminates in a warehouse, where The Driver drives directly at Teeth's car, causing them to swerve out of the way and flip the car. The Driver tells Teeth to surrender, killing him when he refuses. Teeth's driver returns the purse and is allowed to leave.

The Driver returns to the train station with The Player and retrieves the bag from the locker. He is met by The Detective and several police officers waiting to arrest him, but reveals that the bag is empty, having been ripped off by the Exchange Man. Upon seeing the empty bag, The Player leaves. The Driver leaves The Detective literally 'holding the bag', and each man departs from the station.

Cast

Production
The Driver writer-director Walter Hill, pictured in 2014

Development

The Driver is the second film Walter Hill wrote and directed after Hard Times (1975), which starred Charles Bronson. Hill and producer Larry Gordon had just finished Hard Times when Gordon suggested to Hill that they make a film about a getaway driver, to which Hill agreed.[6] Hill then wrote an original screenplay over the summer of 1975, in between the period when Hard Times was made and when it was released (there was a delay because the studio was waiting for other Bronson films to come out).[7]

Hill says he was interested to see how "pure" a film he could make: a genre film that did not conform itself in conventional, Hollywood ways. He said he wrote it as a "very tight script."[6] "I knew when I was getting ready to do the movie that I was taking a chance", said Hill. "This was not meant to be an everyday action movie. I was trying to do something a little more, or a little less, but I was trying to do something else."[7] The script was written in a sparse, minimalist style, which Hill had first employed on Hard Times: "I thought that approach made people read with greater intention. It's spare in detail but written to dramatic effect. You could maybe capture the mind of the reader a little better."[7] Hill sent a copy of the original draft of the script to Raoul Walsh, who gave it his approval.[8]

Pre-production

In the late 1970s, Britain's EMI Films came under the stewardship of Michael Deeley and Barry Spikings. They began co-financing movies shot in Hollywood in association with major US studios that were aimed at the international market, such as Convoy, The Deer Hunter and The Driver. They were interested in financing The Driver provided a suitable star could be found for the lead.[9]

According to Hill, the script was unable to bring in talents for "about a year and a half."[6] The role of the Driver was originally intended for Steve McQueen, who had starred in the Hill-scripted The Getaway (1972).[10] McQueen turned down the role because, as Hill stated, he refused to star in another film that revolved substantially around cars.[7] The studio then went to Bronson, but he was unhappy with Hill. "He thought I had edited Hard Times in a way that had not favoured [Bronson's wife and co-star] Jill Ireland", said Hill, who added he "never thought" casting Bronson "was a good idea. And I never thought he'd do it."[7] Hill was contacted by Ryan O'Neal's agent and agreed to meet the star. "We talked about the role and talked about the minimalist approach I wanted to try", said Hill. "He felt he could do it and we just got comfortable with each other." Although considered primarily a comedy and romantic star at the time, O'Neal's casting enabled the filmmakers to secure financing.[11] O'Neal complimented the filmmaker as "a force to be reckoned with", as well as "a first rate writer and an even better director. And he's fast. Most young directors today think they are David Lean; they spend over a year on a film and we get robots that talk."[12]

Several actors were considered for the female lead, including Julie Christie and Charlotte Rampling. Eventually, it went to Isabelle Adjani, who had gained an international reputation with The Story of Adele H (1975). This was Adjani's first Hollywood role; she had previously turned down the chance to star in The Other Side of Midnight (1977), but agreed to make The Driver because she was an admirer of Hard Times. Of Hill, Adjani commented:

I think he is wonderful, very much in the tradition of Howard Hawks, lean and spare. The story is contemporary but also very stylized, and the roles that Ryan and I play are like Bogart and Bacall. We are both gamblers in our souls and we do not show our emotions or say a lot. For us, talk is cheap. I am really quite a mysterious girl in this film, with no name and no background. And I must say that it is restful not to have a life behind me; this way, I don't have to dig deep to play the part. All I know is that life for me is gambling and I am a loser. I have what people call a poker face.[13]

The studio recommended Robert Mitchum for the role of the Detective. Hill liked the idea and met with Mitchum to discuss the part but the actor turned it down. Hill ended up casting Bruce Dern. "I wanted Bruce's personality", he said. "Audiences get nervous about movies that don't have a lot of dialogue. [...] They like a balance. I wanted Bruce to very much offset the distance of The Driver."[7]

Filming

The film featured several car chase sequences. Hill says he felt the first chase was "kind of a failure" because it "was meant to lead up to a much more spectacular finish" but he was unable to film it properly: it was done on the last night of shooting and an electrician fell off the roof and was badly injured; Hill could not get all the shots he wanted and had to "cobble together" the end result. However, he felt the sequence with the Mercedes 250 S in the garage and the final chase were "as fully realised as I could get them to be."[7] Hill wanted to film chase scenes at night, which he felt had not been done many times in films before.[7] In order to expedite this, Hill shot the dramatic scenes first during the day, then the chase scenes at night. Hill said the night shooting was draining: "It's like you're swimming underwater or hypnotised. And I'm a person that stays up late and wakes up early. But staying up night after night after night really threw me out. You make decisions you cannot explain. You just intuit."[7]

Hill says the major visual influence on the film was the works of artist Edward Hopper.[8] He was also influenced by his work as a second assistant director on Bullitt (1968), which featured a famous car chase. What fascinated Hill on Bullitt was the abundance of shots captured from inside the cars, which compelled him to film the same amount on The Driver.[7] Production wrapped on the film April 1978.[14]

Reception

Critical

Contemporary reviews were extremely poor. Hill later said, "I remember the studio had this huge sheaf of Xeroxed reviews they’d handed me — you could stop a fucking .45 slug with this stack, it was so thick. And of all the reviews in this six-inch thick pile, there was only one good one."[15]

Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called the film "ultraviolent trash that wipes out Ryan O'Neal, Bruce Dern and Isabella Adjani... plays like a bad imitation of a French gangster picture which in turn is a bad imitation of an American gangster picture."[16] Vincent Canby of the New York Times wrote "It is Awful Movie. It is Pretentious Movie. It is Silly Movie. It talks just like this."[17] Roger Ebert gave The Driver 2.5 stars out of 4, writing: "It's a movie about people who are not real because they are symbols, and it's a damned good thing there are great chase scenes or the movie would sink altogether."[18]

Saying it's "probably advisable for film noir aficionados only", film critic Duncan Shepherd of the San Diego Reader gave it five out of five stars. "The whole show, in fact, is something like a coded message passed from the moviemaker to the devotees of the genre, in full view of, but beyond the full understanding of, the rest of the audience", according to Shepherd.[19]

As of September 2018, the film holds an approval rating of 73% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 22 reviews.[20]

Box office

The movie was a commercial disappointment in the United States although it performed better overseas.[21] Hill says "I don't think you could say the film did commercially well anywhere except Japan, where I believe it did reasonable business."[7]

The film opened in 642 theatres in the United States, grossing $2 million for the weekend.[22]

The film grossed a total of 1,102,183 admissions in France.[23] It was the 33rd most popular film of the year.[24]

Producer Larry Gordon later reflected on the film's poor critical and box office response in the US:

If we'd had Clint Eastwood in the film, we'd have been forgiven everything and they'd have said, 'It's another Eastwood film about driving cars'." If we'd had Steve McQueen, we'd have been compared to Bullitt or The Getaway. We were treated as an art film rather than an action film. We took a unique approach to standard material. We'd go the same way again, but with a different cast we might have attracted an audience. I believe in returning investors' money – and if I could make The Driver again I'd try to rectify it for a commercial market. When you're writing this kind of script... naturally you think of an action lead like Bronson or Eastwood... and certainly Fox wanted a name. But when we got Ryan, I suggested we make changes to suit his character. This is always the director's prerogative.[21]

Isabelle Adjani later complained she felt the film hurt her career. "Afterwards the only American offers I got were bad ones", she said. "I did it, really because after The Story of Adele H everyone urged me to make a Hollywood film. I turned down several, and felt I couldn't continue to do that. And I liked Walter Hill. Only later did I realize I'd made a terrible mistake."[25]

Walter Hill recalled, "Had I not been shooting The Warriors at the time, I don't think my career would have survived. They loved it overseas, but in those days, that didn't matter that much. It made exactly zero dollars in the United States.[15]

"I think Ryan gave a very good performance", added Hill. "I was always very happy with what he did."[11] He said, "I was very disappointed that people didn't particularly give him any credit for what he did. To me, he's the best he's ever been. I cannot imagine another actor. When you don't get who you want, sometimes you really do get lucky."[7]

EMI Films had announced plans to make another film with Hill, a Western called The Last Gun, but this did not eventuate.[26]

Legacy

The film has gone on to become more popular, and it often the first film shown during retrospectives of Hill's work.[15]

The Reflections Interactive video game Driver (1999) uses several unmistakable thematic inspirations from this movie.

Both Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994) and Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004) refer to this film: a shot and setup of Vincent Vega skidding out into the road with an overdosed Mia Wallace in the passenger seat in Pulp Fiction is copied from the opening chase of The Driver; and Beatrix Kiddo being described as "the cowgirl [who] ain't never been caught" in Kill Bill: Volume 2 is copied from Ryan O'Neal's character description in The Driver as "the cowboy who could not be caught". According to Wensley Clarkson's book, Tarantino – The Man, the Myths and His Movies, Tarantino lists The Driver as one of the "coolest movies of all time."[27]

The film also influenced Drive (2011), directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. "It's a very different movie", said Hill of this. "It has certain things, as Nic has told me, that are homage and that's fine. It's very complimentary. I bear him no animosity or anything. I think he's a remarkably talented guy and quite like him."[28]

Baby Driver (2017), directed by Edgar Wright, was also influenced by The Driver. Wright commented on Hill's film: "Its influence on video games is very clear and in movies its style has echoed throughout the work of Michael Mann, James Cameron, Quentin Tarantino, Nicolas Refn and now me with my new film (ahem), Baby Driver."[29]

See also

References
  1. "The Driver (1978)". British Board of Film Classification. Retrieved March 25, 2018.
  2. Solomon, Aubrey. Twentieth Century Fox: A Corporate and Financial History (The Scarecrow Filmmakers Series). Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1989. ISBN 978-0-8108-4244-1. p258
  3. Solomon, Aubrey. Twentieth Century Fox: A Corporate and Financial History (The Scarecrow Filmmakers Series). Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1989. ISBN 978-0-8108-4244-1. p234
  4. Box office figures for Walter Hill films in France at Box Office Story
  5. Silver, Alain; Ward, Elizabeth; eds. (1992). Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style (3rd ed.). Woodstock, New York: The Overlook Press. ISBN 0-87951-479-5
  6. "Walter Hill". Legends of Film Podcast (Podcast). Nashville Public Library. February 22, 2012. Event occurs at 13:51–16:29.
  7. Wright, Chris (13 March 2017). "Edgar Wright and Walter Hill Discuss The Driver". Empire.
  8. French, Philip (November 1, 1981). "The storyteller". The Observer. p. 30.
  9. Kilday, Gregg (4 Apr 1977). "DeNiro a Vet Again in 'Hunter'". Los Angeles Times. p. e9.
  10. Tobias, Scott (14 April 2011). "Walter Hill". AV Club. Retrieved 25 April 2014.
  11. "The Driver". Turner Classic Movies.
  12. Flatley, Guy (30 Dec 1977). "At the Movies". New York Times. p. C8.
  13. Flatley, Guy (1977-08-12). "At the Movies: Isabelle Adjani Finds Poker Easy; Cheating Takes Practice". New York Times. Retrieved 2016-11-01.
  14. "The Driver (1978): Miscellaneous Notes". Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved March 17, 2018.
  15. Fear, David (16 September 2016). "Walter Hill on Controversial Revenge Thriller '(Re)Assignment'". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 8 October 2016.
  16. Thomas, Kevin (28 July 1978). "'Driver': Violence in First Gear". Los Angeles Times. p. i19.
  17. Canby, Vincent (1978-07-28). "Screen: 'Driver' Takes a Rocky Road:No Names, Please!". New York Times. Retrieved 2016-11-01.
  18. http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-driver-1978
  19. Review of The Driver in the Reader. Archived February 13, 2005, at the Wayback Machine
  20. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/driver
  21. Taylor, Clarke (8 Oct 1978). "LARRY GORDON ROLLS HIS DICE". Los Angeles Times. p. n35.
  22. "Latest As To 'Wars'". Variety. August 2, 1978. p. 82.
  23. JP. "The Driver (1978)". JPBox-Office. Retrieved 2012-04-06.
  24. "1978 Box Office". Box Office Story.
  25. Mann, Roderick (24 July 1983). "Movies:Isabelle Adjani Hopes that a US Hit is in the Cards". Los Angeles Times. p. s23.
  26. Kilday, Gregg (Oct 22, 1977). "FILM CLIPS: 'The Body Snatchers' Moves Up". Los Angeles Times. p. c11.
  27. Tarantino – The Man, the Myths and His Movies by Wensley Clarkson. John Blake, Publisher, 2007. ISBN 1-84454-366-8
  28. Brown, Phil (15 September 2016). "Walter Hill on His Controversial Thriller '(Re) Assignment' and Why He Quit 'Deadwood'". Collider.
  29. Hewitt, Chris (13 Mar 2017). "Edgar Wright And Walter Hill Discuss The Driver". Empire.
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