Movie Box Review

Creatively, last night's season finale of BREAKING BAD was extraordinary in almost every way (how long till the final 16 episodes start airing?).  In the ratings, according to TV By the Numbers it did quite well, but not quite up to the mark of its season premiere (around a 0.9 rating as opposed to a 1.1).  AMC does note, though, that the season as a whole set a new high for the series, which was up an impressive 24% in 18-49s from Season 3, and a truly remarkable 42% among 18-34 year olds.

Spoilers after the break...

In her review of The Godfather Part II, Pauline Kael famously asked "Is it our imagination, or is Michael [Corleone]'s face beginning to rot?"  Breaking Bad, which has become a story of moral degeneration worthy of being mentioned in the same sentence as Coppola's masterpiece, is posing the same question about Walter White.  Last night, in the stunning season finale (written and directed by series creator Vince Gilligan), Walter won his 2-season war with Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito, and how sad are we to see him go?), but along the way, he discarded what was left of his humanity.  Walter deliberately poisoned--and nearly murdered--a child, and not just any child, but the boy most cherished by his best friend and partner Jesse (Aaron Paul).  All in order to manipulate Jesse into abandoning Gus's camp and join him in wholeheartedly planning Gus's murder.  With this, Walter passed from being a criminal into becoming a monster.

While it's hard to believe that Walter, who used to be a mild-mannered high school science teacher, could have fallen (risen?) to this level of evil, it's equally remarkable that Gilligan has carried us along with Walter on this dark journey.  Even more astonishing, Gilligan made us believe last week that Walter was absolutely innocent of this terrible crime, and then turned our own gullibility back on us this week when we found out that we had been conned as badly as Jesse was.   (One nit, for the record:  the final shot of Gus, while certainly technically impressive and conceptually in keeping with the show's dark humor, was a little too showy--a bit too much of an in-joke crossover with AMC's Walking Dead.)

All of this, of course, could only be accomplished with the amazing work of Bryan Cranston, who should probably clear off space on his mantel for a another Emmy.  The entire cast has been superb, but Cranston, Paul and Esposito tower even over the rest.

Breaking Bad has been both the most nailbiting thriller of this year--even though we all pretty much knew Gus wouldn't see next season, who saw the wheelchair bell bomb coming?--and its most provocative drama (its moral ambiguities make Dexter look like Glee).  We know for certain that the next 16 episodes--probably spread over 2 seasons--will be its last, and the question is just how much farther it can go.  Clearly, Walter is no longer acting out of mere self-preservation, much less to earn money for his family--he's as addicted to crime as his customers are to his perfect meth.  Can anyone doubt, after last night, that Walter would let his wife be killed in order to save himself?  (Arguably, she even deserves it, for her idiot schemes to avoid the IRS.)  Not to mention Jesse, not to mention his brother-in-law or lawyer.  Would he stop if his own children were at stake?  Could he?

AMC has taken plenty of heat the last few months for its very public contract and budget battles over its shows, but let's give them the credit they deserve:  this network, which barely existed a few years ago, has given us 2 of the best shows in the history of television in Mad Man and Breaking Bad.  Even if they can't get out of their own way sometimes, that's a hell of a record.

DRIVE is a self-conscious genre movie, and those are tricky propositions.  On the one hand, you need to make your existential or other textual statement with all the artistry at your command; on the other, you still have to fulfill the demands of the genre you've chosen.  If you do it right, you have Heat; make a mistake and you've got The Driver.  Nicolas Winding Refn has for the most part made smart decisions, and the result is an exciting, moody thriller graced with an exceptional cast and some high-caliber moviemaking.

Taking a cue from The Driver, the protagonist of Drive has no given name, and is credited merely as "Driver."  (Walter Hill's picture pushed the pretention farther, with hardly any of the characters having names.)  Ryan Gosling, continuing to find a sweet spot between commercial vehicles (so to speak) and art-house cinema, plays a man with overlapping jobs:  he's a movie stunt-driver, an auto mechanic and a getaway driver for heists.  (In all 3 professions, he works with Shannon, played by Bryan Cranston.)  As a getaway man, he insists on strict rules:  he has nothing to do with the robbery itself, but provides the crooks with a window of exactly 5 minutes.  If they're in his car with the loot within that window, he guarantees they'll get where they want to go; any earlier or later, and he's gone. 

Our hero is reticent (of course), but immensely loyal, and he lets Shannon talk him into a plan to work together on a NASCAR auto, for which he'll be the driver.  This requires capital, however, which brings them into the orbit of gangster Bernie Rose (Albert Brooks) and his partner Nino (Ron Perlman).  As one may easily imagine, no good can come of this.  Meanwhile, he's also met his neighbor down the hall, Irene (Carey Mulligan) and her young son Benicio (Kaden Leos).  The three become close, but then Irene's husband Standard (Oscar Isaac) is released from prison, which starts the plot rolling and the characters dying.  Inevitably, things boil down to the Driver facing off against those who threaten the people he cares about. 

Refn directed the Danish Pusher trilogy, as well as the prison drama Bronson, so he's not a newcomer to the melding of thrills with character and theme.  Working from a spare script by Hossein Amini (from the novel by James Sallis), Refn works the genre conventions--the heist gone bad, the chases, the double-crosses that become triple, the killings that have to happen because a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do--with style and speed, and no compunction about mixing aesthetically composed chase sequences with sudden, bloody and brutal violence.  The gorgeous LA photography is by Newton Thomas Sigel, whose films include 3 Kings and The Usual Suspects, and the swift, lucid editing is by Mat Newman, a Refn veteran.  Also notable is the score by Cliff Martinez, a regular member of Steven Soderbergh's team. 

This side of Michael Mann, rarely do genre efforts draw this kind of cast. Gosling's streak of quality movies continues, and in what easily could have been a rote Man-With-No-Name kind of role, he brings humanity and a believably heartfelt wish to avoid the violence he wreaks.  Mulligan has perfected the heartfelt yearning she conveyed in An Education and Never Let Me Go; her part here is thin, but she fills it with emotion.  Probably the movie's biggest surprise is Albert Brooks--he did a jokey convict role in Out of Sight, but here he's utterly convincing as an aging gangster who's wearily willing to handle the dirty work himself.  Perlman, Isaac, Cranston and Christina Hendricks all contribute tasty supporting bits.

It's difficult to sell a movie like Drive, because even great reviews can drive the genre fans away, while promos that center on car chases and shoot-outs may not appeal to the art film crowd.  Gosling, although one of the fastest-rising actors around, has yet to prove that his name can open a movie on its own.  However it does at the box office, however, Drive is a superior example of having your genre and deconstructing it too.