Honestly I think that's why it's one of the best. That slow, deliberate tension. It's also very much the style of a lot of the rest of the movie - McQueen following leads on the street gumshoe style, surveillance from rooftops etc. All the quiet before the shit goes down. That and it makes the buckling of the seatbelt and absolute :chefs-kiss: moment.
speaking of deliberate tension before a car chase, there's a moment during the robbery scene in Refn's Drive , specifically around 1:15 of this clip, where the chrysler enters the scene and pulls this little slow, circular turn that ends exactly perpendicular from where it started, perfectly parked within a parking space without slowing or correcting the turn.
obviously it's already ominous because its entering the parking lot of a quiet robbery in progress and our protagonist is looking at it, but the slow precision of that parking job to casually parallel the getaway vehicle tightens the tension so hard for me and is one of the standout details in the movie. like the way a hired killer might do a small flick or flourish with a weapon while holstering it.
also, in trivia, i remember reading somewhere that Refn had never driven a car before making the movie, lol.
That clip won't play for me but I've seen that movie enough that I know exactly the moment you mean. The calm of the charger pulling into the lot is exactly why you know it's a serious threat. Even aside from the purposefully parallel parking job you mention, it mimics everything Ryan Gosling says about his own process. A car that's powerful but not too obvious (the slight difference is deliberate), black, doesn't make a scene until he has to, waits subtly in the way he did several times in the opening etc.
I don't know if that factoid is true for Refn, I think I remember him talking about driving places on the commentaries for the Pusher filmsfilms and on Drive he definitely talks about Gosling driving him around playing the radio at night while they talked about the movie.
Have you ever seen The Driver? Great in its own right and a big influence on lots of things including very obviously Drive. It's a lot slower and more tense and muted like Drive but the modernised trailer gives a real good sell of it.
not gonna lie, I had always heard big boomer talk about this incredible chase scene, but I've never seen the movie.
and like that first minute or so where they are just driving around, I was like, "surely, they were not talking about this."
Honestly I think that's why it's one of the best. That slow, deliberate tension. It's also very much the style of a lot of the rest of the movie - McQueen following leads on the street gumshoe style, surveillance from rooftops etc. All the quiet before the shit goes down. That and it makes the buckling of the seatbelt and absolute :chefs-kiss: moment.
speaking of deliberate tension before a car chase, there's a moment during the robbery scene in Refn's Drive , specifically around 1:15 of this clip, where the chrysler enters the scene and pulls this little slow, circular turn that ends exactly perpendicular from where it started, perfectly parked within a parking space without slowing or correcting the turn.
obviously it's already ominous because its entering the parking lot of a quiet robbery in progress and our protagonist is looking at it, but the slow precision of that parking job to casually parallel the getaway vehicle tightens the tension so hard for me and is one of the standout details in the movie. like the way a hired killer might do a small flick or flourish with a weapon while holstering it.
also, in trivia, i remember reading somewhere that Refn had never driven a car before making the movie, lol.
That clip won't play for me but I've seen that movie enough that I know exactly the moment you mean. The calm of the charger pulling into the lot is exactly why you know it's a serious threat. Even aside from the purposefully parallel parking job you mention, it mimics everything Ryan Gosling says about his own process. A car that's powerful but not too obvious (the slight difference is deliberate), black, doesn't make a scene until he has to, waits subtly in the way he did several times in the opening etc.
I don't know if that factoid is true for Refn, I think I remember him talking about driving places on the commentaries for the Pusher filmsfilms and on Drive he definitely talks about Gosling driving him around playing the radio at night while they talked about the movie.
Have you ever seen The Driver? Great in its own right and a big influence on lots of things including very obviously Drive. It's a lot slower and more tense and muted like Drive but the modernised trailer gives a real good sell of it.
I went like "Aww shit now it's on".
Hell yeah, that's exactly it.
From what I understand about film history this is the car chase that established what a car chase could contribute to a movie.