The Driver 1978

Sly Stallone mentioned when he was working on Bullet to the Head with Director Walter Hill (48 Hours, The Warriors) that he had to pass on working with Hill back in the late 70s on a movie called The Driver.  This movie has been on my watch list for a while and Amazon has a nice price on it and since I have never come across it during my cinema hunting trips I pulled the trigger and ordered it.  

"The Driver" (Ryan O’Neal) is a specialist in a rare business: he drives getaway cars in robberies. His exceptional talent has prevented him from being caught so far. After another successful escape from the police, “The Detective” (Bruce Dern) makes it his primary goal to catch the Driver. He promises a bank robbery gang after their latest capture that if they help to convict the driver in a set-up robbery that they will go free.

I have always thought of Ryan O’Neal as being a romantic drama/ comedy actor and certainly did not know him for any action movies but in the case of The Driver I think this works great because you do not know a thing about this “Driver” except for maybe the occasional name of Cowboy that the Detective gives him a couple of times.  Walter Hill also wrote the screenplay for this and wrote it with Steve McQueen in mind as the two worked together on Bullitt but McQueen was not doing action movies anymore and was probably not in the best of health then either considering the time line here, so he declined.  Charles Bronson was also tabbed for the role since he and Hill had worked on Hard Times together but he also declined because he did not care for the way Hill edited out most of his wife’s scenes, Jill Ireland, from the movie.  Bruce Dern is The Detective and is great as always and you develop a dislike for the character right away.

The Driver is a really good action movie, that is tightly paced, has little dialogue, and has some terrific car chases in it.  I feel like there are gaps missing in the movie as we seem to jump right into some scenes unexpectedly, like the bank robbery, so it apparently had some heavy edits to it.  There are no names in this movie so check the cast list and all you will see is The Driver, The Detective, Teeth, Fingers, Exchange Man, etc. as I think that is a pretty cool concept.  You can see that 2011’s Drive surely had some love for this movie.  So, buckle up and take a ride with The Driver and see what happens at the end of the job.