First thoughts on Drive
Sunday, April 15. 2007
Drive had its 2-hour debut tonight, before it's moved to its "regular" time slot of Mondays. Overall I thought it was pretty decent...a bit ham-fisted with the exposition at times, and one or two of the characters could be fleshed out a little better, but not bad at all.
I have to admit, it was nice to see two of the last characters we saw in Firefly show up right in the beginning of the show (Nathan "Cap'n Mal" Fillion as our main protagonist and Richard "Jubal Early" Brooks as the cop). As expected, Fillion's character was the best in the show so far. A close second has to go to Charles Martin Smith (Agent Oscar Wallace from The Untouchables) - even though he was given a couple of clunkers, he made them work. The rest of the cast looks like it has potential, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes.
Of course, the first reason why I tuned in was to see a modern interpretation of Cannonball Run or The Gumball Rally and see some good car chases. There were a couple of car performances I could've done without (Kevin Alejandro needs to stop making his '64 hop up and down each time he starts it...we get it, he has a lowrider), but happily these were overshadowed by several excellent performances on the road. The highlights for me included the '72 Ford Pickup/new Charger highway scene, the '72 Ford Pickup/'64 Chevy drag race at night, and the Taurus/'64 Chevy game on the way to Cape Canaveral. All three had good action, tight driving, and were shot by someone who knows how to put together a chase sequence. I wish more movies had such good car chases.
So overall, I give the human actors a solid "B" for the first two episodes, while the cars & their chase scenes get an "A." If you're a fan of car chase movies, you really ought to check out the show. If the rest of the season is put together as well as these episodes were, we could see some great action in the near future.
I have to admit, it was nice to see two of the last characters we saw in Firefly show up right in the beginning of the show (Nathan "Cap'n Mal" Fillion as our main protagonist and Richard "Jubal Early" Brooks as the cop). As expected, Fillion's character was the best in the show so far. A close second has to go to Charles Martin Smith (Agent Oscar Wallace from The Untouchables) - even though he was given a couple of clunkers, he made them work. The rest of the cast looks like it has potential, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes.
Of course, the first reason why I tuned in was to see a modern interpretation of Cannonball Run or The Gumball Rally and see some good car chases. There were a couple of car performances I could've done without (Kevin Alejandro needs to stop making his '64 hop up and down each time he starts it...we get it, he has a lowrider), but happily these were overshadowed by several excellent performances on the road. The highlights for me included the '72 Ford Pickup/new Charger highway scene, the '72 Ford Pickup/'64 Chevy drag race at night, and the Taurus/'64 Chevy game on the way to Cape Canaveral. All three had good action, tight driving, and were shot by someone who knows how to put together a chase sequence. I wish more movies had such good car chases.
So overall, I give the human actors a solid "B" for the first two episodes, while the cars & their chase scenes get an "A." If you're a fan of car chase movies, you really ought to check out the show. If the rest of the season is put together as well as these episodes were, we could see some great action in the near future.
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