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The first ten minutes are a triumph of sirens and flashing lights from police cars in the night of Los Angeles chasing the bandits' car just after they have robbed the casino. So is it one of those so-called car-chase films? It's not that simple.
In 1978, Walter Hill is primarily a screenwriter and assistant director for important films such as "Bullit" by Peter Yates and "Getaway" by Peckinpah, so it's clear that his preference is for the crime genre. But "The Driver" is something more: it's a Zen exercise.
This is evident from the identification of the protagonists who do not have a proper name but are symbolically referred to as the Driver (Ryan O'Neal), the Detective (Bruce Dern), the Player (Isabelle Adjani). Therefore, the figure of the Driver is comparable to that of a ronin, an unperturbed samurai without a master (..no friends, no steady job, no girls, living with little money, asking no questions...good, you have reduced everything to the essential), so skilled at driving cars that criminals vying for the big score are willing to pay a fortune to hire him.
Ryan O'Neal is magnificent, in the entire film he utters just 350 words, acting with gazes, silences, no sudden or reckless movements, fully in control of himself. Trapping him becomes an obsession and a challenge for the Detective, to prove how good he is at his job on the side of the good guys and thus "superior" to a criminal. His problem lies in being instead a boastful braggart who talks too much, who is not afraid to play dirty and thus will lose. There's a scene where he visits the Driver in his apartment, trying to intimidate him by playing the dominator, but from his lowered eyes to the few words spoken by the other, you understand who the winner is.
The Player becomes involved because she saw the driver's face during the escape, but pretends not to recognize him and helps him in the course of the film (but does she?): she too is of few words, marked by who knows what experiences in life. Unfortunately, Adjani's performance does not match Ryan O'Neal's; she has a single expression that she carries throughout the entire film. The night, the cold neon lights, the wet asphalt, the seedy bars are the inevitable setting for a solitary man who has no purpose, who earns large sums but lives in a shabby motel room with only the melancholic country music from a small tape recorder for company..
The car chases are technically perfect, but the best scenes are those shot indoors. The first, in a vast empty garage with the Driver showcasing his skills to the criminals who want him for a bank heist (a trap set by the Detective); he practically demolishes their flashy red Mercedes with class, scraping walls to nip off the mirrors, unhinge the doors, tear off the bumpers, like a gunslinger who ridicules the opponent by shooting their belt to leave them in their underwear. The other is shot in an old container yard at the docks: a claustrophobic "chess game" between two cars made of small advances, reverses, extreme braking, engines idling ready to accelerate.
Like a Carver loaned to cinema, Walter Hill cuts behaviors to the bone, but for us spectators, there is much to savor.
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