The Driver (1978)

“My line of work is kinda hard to come by.”
- Ryan O'Neal, as The Driver.



Walter Hill has made some of the best action thriller movies. His 1978 crime caper The Driver is by-far one of the original and best in the genre and a movie I never tire of watching. The style of the movie is low key, minimalist and lean on characterisation. Writer and director Walter Hill proves that using a lot less can result in a lot more.

The characters are known only by either their job description, or distinguishing features.
Ryan O’Neal is The Driver of the title, a highly skilled getaway driver for hire with a talent for eluding justice. He is a loner and existentialist, a man who speaks and moves only when necessary, but his every word and action are delivered with deliberate purpose. His only form of relaxation and escape seems to be when he listens to Don Williams' songs on his small cassette player.

In the opening scene, he scopes the cars in a multi-storey car park and steals the model most suited to the heist he is about to become involved in.

Isabella Adjani is The Player, a 22-year-old professional gambler and high-class call girl. She emerges from a casino as The Driver, after making an impromptu short-cut by crashing through a wooden fence, pulls up outside. They look at each other for a long moment as he opens the rear door and waits for the two robbers to exit the building with the loot.

Bruce Dern is The Detective, an obsessive, arrogant, antagonistic and abrasive bad cop who has no problem with roughing up suspects and spilling hot coffee onto The Driver’s hands in an effort to provoke him into losing his temper and throwing a punch so he can put him away for two years on a charge of assaulting a police officer. When this fails, The Detective resorts to blackmailing the leader of another gang of criminals into hiring The Driver for a bank heist, hoping to lead The Driver into a trap and scoring a big conviction, turning his pursuit into a game, gambling his badge and pension on capturing him. The Detective threatens the gang with a long term in jail for a supermarket robbery. Disliked by his partners on the case, The Detective recommends reading the sports page of the daily newspaper as preparation for a cop’s working day, holding the same contempt for his fellow cops, regarding them as losers, as much as the criminals he hunts in the course of his duty. Bruce Dern’s harsh and uncompromising performance adds tremendously to the movie and the brief scene at 0:27:49, in which he is standing in a glass-walled elevator, on his way up to further question and harass The Player, observing the lights of the night-time cityscape outside, provides one of the best noir moments.

The Player willingly provides The Driver with an alibi, knowing that he will pay her off. They instantly form a bond, seeing in each other a mirror of their own character. The Detective checks into her past and discovers a shady history he tries to use to blackmail her with. This is The Detectives mistake, his attempt to intimidate her fail and he only succeeds in pushing her closer to The Driver.

Ronee Blackley is The Contact, the go-between who informs The Driver of the gang who wish to hire him for the bank heist.

Tara King plays Frizzy, a receptionist in a cheap, rundown hotel, a role she also played in Walter Hill’s 48 Hours (1983).

The Driver takes an instant dislike to the gang, seeing them for the lowlifes and second-raters they are. They have their first meeting meet in an underground car park and, after one of them challenges The Driver’s expertise he dramatically trashes their car and then turns down their offer.

But after a little taunting by The Detective, The Driver takes up the challenge and accepts the job and increases his price as an added insult to the gang.

The high-speed chase sequences that bookend the movie are realistic as well as exciting, like those of The French Connection (1971) and Bullitt (1968), and the resulting car wreck of the climax is bone-jarring to watch.

Forget the cgi-laden, impossible car chases and stunts of more recent movies and revisit this noir classic where the cars are driven for real … not in a computer!

Fast-paced, gripping, atmospheric and stylish, with an effective soundtrack composed and conducted by Michael Small, The Driver delivers on many levels with a clever twist in the finale.

In the end, when the game has played out, there are no winners, but is it merely financial gain or the thrill of the chase that ultimately drives The Driver?