took a day off work today to recharge my batteries and watch drive (1997, dir. steve wang) starring mark dacascos, kadeem hardison, and brittany murphy.
it rules. it rules so hard. i cannot stress enough how much it rules. there is an alternate universe where this movie was released in theaters instead of dropped unceremoniously into direct-to-video land and it became one of the biggest action movies of the year. it has so much fun, and is way smarter, more inventive, and more clever than it has any right to be.
the premise is straight out of the video store - toby wong (dacascos) hitched a ride on a boat from hong kong to the us, a shady evil dude in a cowboy hat wants him dead, he escapes the boat and stumbles upon malik (hardisen) who is writing poetry at a bar before the two end up in a lethal weapon/rush hour/insert your buddy movie here-type trek to LA so wong can make it to a tech corp so they can remove the experimental chip implanted in his chest that makes him a superhuman martial arts master.
i have seen many movies like this before on mst3k or heard red letter media cackle over movies like this before. it is still very much one of those movies - you can feel the limitations of the DTV budget in spots which holds it back from being a truly great action movie. but it's good where it counts:
- the fight choreography, which feels the closest an american film has gotten to truly evoking the go-for-broke action sequences from hong kong cinema. mark dacascos is endlessly gymkata-ing around the place, truly one of the greatest underappreciated action stars of our time. and the fights were choreographed by koichi sakamoto, whose resume is filled with credits on power rangers and kamen rider shows over the past two decades. so. that's what you're getting into. a lot of sick poses, a lot of environmental weaponry, a lot of gimmicks and gags that take a situation (two guys handcuffed together, a fight in a garage, etc.) and asks "what can we do here that looks tight as hell". there's a bit where hardison cuts a dude's hand off with a chainsaw, the hand flips and starts firing the still-attached gun, and perforates the dude as it falls to the ground. howling with laughter. incredible.
or, like, just watch the clip of it happening:
movies in this budget-range typically take the easy way out: put the camera on a tripod, set it up in a corner, let the two guys kinda punch at each other a bit, and shoot everything super flat. drive never takes the easy way out.
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the chemistry: dacascos and hardison are great together, and their banter is funny without relying on the cringey "fish out of water" type stuff that rush hour relies on. murphy is also great - she's only in this for a half hour or so but she changes the whole vibe of the movie in a really fun way. anyone else in that role and it would have been really painful to watch - just reminds you how great she was and what could have been.
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and it's actually funny! it's able to wink and nod at itself but it's not obnoxious or overly-obvious about it.
anyway, check it out. it's a hell of a movie. i had to keep reminding myself that it was originally VHS-only, it punches above its weight the entire runtime. 88 films put out a 4K UHD Blu-ray of this thing and it's easy to see why - Drive deserves to be seen and talked about in the same breath as stuff like Righting Wrongs and Supercop.
four out of five stars
