The film Drive is a 2011 American crime drama film, directed by Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, starring Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, Oscar Isaac and Albert Brooks. It is adapted from 2005 James Sallis novel of the same name, Drive, with a screenplay by Hossein Amini.
The text contains a mass amount of noir conventions, one of these can be the lighting, and how it constantly changes especially on the protagonist (Ryan Gosling), depending on what he has done or was doing. For example, just before he was about to kill the assassin in the lift, the lighting on his face went low-key, and was barely visible, but when he declined keeping the money with the elderly man in the car, his face was visible with lighting focusing on him. This lighting will show whether he is doing a good or bad thing, and will sometimes put light on only half his face showing he has a good and bad side. The lighting will help the audience judge a protagonist, whether he is good, bad or a mixture.
Another convention of the noir genre used in this genre is the mistrust and paranoia of the protagonist just after the robbery was completed and they were in the hotel room with the money. The heist didn't go to plan and and the protagonist began to mistrust the red-haired female, and begins to question her. The mistrust began to be correct as two assassins arrive to kill the protagonist and the woman and take the money, but he has already predicted it and is prepared.
Throughout the film, there was a lot of iconography used, mainly negative. One example of this can be the strip club. The protagonist enters the club with only one ambition, to find the person responsible for his friends death. The film doesn't even show it is a strip club, but connotations of naked woman, flashing lights and loud music tell us that before it is even established. When he walks into the office, there are various naked women sitting around the man and some don't even show a hint of shock. In noir genre films, strip clubs and clubs are usually negative places, whereas in comedy genre films they would usually become a positive.
The character role theme in Drive focused on mainly the protagonist and femme fatale. Irene fitted into the slot of the femme fatale perfectly, she was an attractive woman who eventually caused danger to the protagonist. Originally the protagonist participated in the heist to help out the man who had a debt, but he then gained an attraction with Irene and dedicated the mission to her, eventually allowing himself to get killed just to save her and her son. This shows represents femme fatale very ideally, showing that no matter she will always drag the protagonist into danger.
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