Before Rush Hour (1998) and The Matrix (1999), there was Drive. Director Steve Wang keeps his masterpiece fast paced and action packed with some good comedy blended into the dynamic, high-flying, martial-arts antics choreographed by Koichi Sakamoto (Power Rangers). Mark Dacascos provides the punches and kicks while Kadeen Hardison sets up the laughs. Brittany Murphy and Tracy Walter also show up to add their quirky, over-the-top energy to this ahead-of-its-time romp.
Buy Drive Blu-rayToby (Dacascos) is a genetically altered, special agent from Hong Kong working for the Chinese government but he wants out and is ready to sell the tech hidden within his body to a company based in the USA. Once on American soil, Toby has to get from San Francisco to Los Angeles, fast. How can he do that and shake off the government goons and bad guys hired to bring him in? Drive! So Toby commandeers a car (and driver) from out-of-work, songwriter Malik (Hardison), who he becomes entangled with while taking cover in a bar. Toby and Malik are now L.A.-bound road dogs, dodging trouble right and left while fighting their way out of close calls and tight spots.
Flying across the desert en route to L.A. in Malik’s (now) beat-up car, the misfit duo stops at a (thankfully) empty motel to rest and recharge. While Toby gets some much needed sleep, Malik fends off the advances of the bored young Deliverance (Murphy) as he repairs his beloved car. It isn’t long before the team of baddies finds them and the adventure starts up again. The Chinese government decides to level up the pursuit and sends in an assassin with a more advanced version of the tech found inside Toby. Bullets fly and fists are furious in the explosive battle that ensues during the movie’s climax at an odd futuristic, trendy, space-themed bar and grill/night club.
Drive is way better than I ever expected. The martial-arts action is great, and the light comedy helps break up the action without stalling out the pace. Mark Dacascos and Kadeem Hardison play well off of each other while handling the action with ease. Having never heard of Steven Wang’s straight-to-video magnum opus, I had only my knowledge of Dacascos to go on. Dacascos was familiar from his work on the Double Dragon movie (1994) and the short-lived TV series The Crow, based on the Brandon Lee movie of the same name. I also recalled co-stars Kadeem Hardison from The Cosby Show spin-off, A Different World, and of course, the effervescent Brittany Murphy from Clueless (1994).
Drive, like any other low-budget movie, has its plot holes and weak spots, like the out-of-place desert landscape from Frisco to L.A. and the fact that this clearly was not filmed in S. F. but the martial-arts action is truly outstanding. I expected cheap kicks and missed punches but top-notch fight choreographer Koichi Sakamoto of Power Rangers fame and his expert stunt team never let that happen. Sakamoto and Wang had worked together on previous films and they really nailed it on Drive, mixing great physical stunts and practical effects with decent CGI when needed. Dacascos and Hardison work well together and their easy nature shows as they fight and drive along the California back roads. It really is like The Matrix meets Rush Hour with a way lower budget and released more than a year before those movies hit the big screen.
MVD Visual’s Rewind Collection Blu-ray presents the movie in a new 4K scan of the original camera negative and includes some great extras. Special features include vintage interviews with the cast and crew, deleted scenes, and a commentary track. The audio commentary with Wang, Sakamoto, Dacascos, and Hardison is informative and funny throughout. The foursome provide a great second viewing as they joke and reminisce while watching the movie. The way they laugh and kid each other had me laughing right along with them and shows that the bond formed on set has carried over through the years.
Wang provides insight on how, what he dubbed “the HBO Version” of the movie, came about without his involvement and against his will. Wang does not like that version at all and points out how the heavy cuts remove the human side of Tobey, making him more of a mercenary-type character. The video release also replaced much of the driving rock music soundtrack with ’90s-era techno beats and sounds to help enhance the action but it doesn’t add much of anything overall. The edited version is also included in an untouched VHS form (dull and pixelated a time or two) and shows that the edits take the heart out of the movie not only by dehumanizing Toby but by cutting the epic action down as well. Having both versions available to watch further illustrates how the longer version is far superior. We also learn the fun fact that it is “thee” Les Claypool of the band Primus, who was supervising sound editor.
From the totally misleading poster/cover art, one would expect Drive to be some sort of cheap shoot ‘em up, Lethal Weapon knock off. What we get is 112 minutes of Shaw Bros. meets low-budget ’80s ninja movie, high-flying action where the kicks and punches send people flying and spinning 40 feet away with some comedy and explosions scattered throughout. Fun stuff for sure.
