Snark, Critic and Pop!

I saw a movie in theaters this week.  It has been a while.  Killing time between work and a glorious, victorious night of Cactus League softball in the lovely metropolis of Waxhaw, NC was just a bonus.  I actually wanted to see Drive.  The trailer made it seem like a cool, film noir version of Jason Statham’s awesome action picture the Transporter.  Heck, Drive had a 93% positive rating on Rottentomatoes.com!  What could go wrong?

I’ll tell you what went wrong – the unnamed, main character of Drive, listed in the credits simply as “Driver.”  (I suppose an homage to the most famous, anonymous anti-hero, Clint Eastwood’s Spaghetti Western character Man With No Name.)  The Driver is played the film’s star, Academy Award nominee Ryan Gosling.  Gosling is a good actor, but whether the problem is with his choice on how to play the Driver or how the Driver was intended, by gum it just did not work for me.  In fact it made me want to stop the film at multiple points just so I could slap the star in the face. (continue reading…)