Most action heroes don’t have much of an inner life, as moviegoers aren’t paying good money to watch James Bond contemplate the nature of his existence beyond concluding which secret base he needs to blow up to perpetuate it. Sure, John Wick misses his wife and dog, and Ethan Hunt likes a little recreational mountain climbing, but it’s hard to separate any of these people from their raison d’etre of piling up bodies for our amusement. Do you think John Wick goes bowling on the weekend or loses himself in his coin collection?
Ryan Gosling doesn’t go bowling in Drive, but you can certainly picture it. Gosling features as either the Kid or the Driver, depending on who’s addressing him — aside from raising questions about whether a man who’s 31 and looks it can still be considered part of kid-dom, he’s a mechanic by day and a stunt driver also by day, both under the supervision of good-natured schlub Shannon (Bryan Cranston). But by night, he’s a getaway driver for anonymous clients, getting them safely from their robberies and into the vast LA night.
