"Small bills." Those are the first words uttered by Driver's player character, four or five missions into the game. Before then, you'd be forgiven for assuming that this undercover cop and former race car driver was a silent protagonist. But no: Tanner, as he's called, simply prefers to let the roaring engine of a 1974 Gran Torino do the talking.
Oh, and he likes to be paid in small bills. That's all we know about him, aside from the fact that his last career ended in a fiery crash – which is how most failed missions end in Driver, too. Thankfully, the gangsters, pimps, and informants on the other end of Tanner's phone readily fill the air. They speak in the idiom of blaxploitation cinema, the '70s subgenre of action film which celebrated the slang and agency of its African American criminal characters, even as it made money for white writers and producers by leaning on racial stereotypes.
