I Don't Know How She Does It

Check listings for details

I don’t know how it’s happened, but somehow the guy from The Notebook may be on the verge of saving American badass cinema. After a year that’s seen every Hollywood hero gifted with superpowers, Ryan Gosling’s performance in Drive is earning plaudits as the most cool of 2011.

I guess there might have been people who saw this coming after his star-making performance in Young Hercules — seriously, he was exactly what I would have thought Kevin Sorbo was like as a teen — but to me he’s still Jimmy’s old pal Sean from Breaker High.

That’s not to suggest Gosling’s stunt-car driving antihero isn’t a welcome reprieve from the drudge Hollywood’s been throwing at fans of balls-out action in recent years, I’m just saying it’s surprising that it was a Gosling movie that did it. I’ve argued that The Expendables was the Miami Heat of action movies because it proved even the most charismatic of today’s top action stars couldn’t handle the pressure of being “the man,” à la the Stallone of yesteryear or a John McClain-era Bruce Willis, so they instead tried to create a super team. And if that’s so, Gosling’s our cinematic era’s Dirk Nowitzki. He’s going up against the odds and winning the battle to be Hollywood’s number one badass.

In Drive, Gosling plays a guy named Driver who is very good at driving. With a name like that you would have to hope so. This Driver guy is a stunt driver, but also a getaway driver for bank robbers and such. He meets Carey Mulligan and falls in love with her, which is what you do when you meet Carey Mulligan. One thing leads to another and that other thing is, fortunately for us, a whole lot of violence.

It’s directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, whose previous work includes the incredible Bronson, and by all accounts Drive is brutal and beautiful. It’s also a refreshing throwback to the days of Eastwood and McQueen, when a hero wasn’t some beefed up former commando with a heart of gold. No, a hero was just a quiet stranger with a dark secret who stumbled out of the bar with whisky on his breath and got sucked into some crap he didn’t start, but he was sure as hell going to finish. It’s still weird that it’s Ryan Gosling doing the ass-kicking, but more power to him for pulling it off.

On the opposite end of the badass spectrum is Sarah Jessica Parker. She’s starring in I Don’t Know How She Does It, which implies that her Sex and the City money hasn’t run out so she still doesn’t need to actually try. Truthfully, her role as Carrie Bradshaw on that show pretty much ensured Parker will be forever typecast as a fashionable New York gal. And if that’s so, there’s absolutely nothing for her to be ashamed of. She was good in that role, and as bad as the movies based on the show have been, she pulls off successful charming urban professionals with crazy personal lives as well as anyone. That sounds boring to me, but the people who created I Don’t Know How She Does It really don’t care what a guy who just compared a movie starring Stone Cold Steve Austin to a professional basketball team think.

There was an article in The Guardian recently defending Hollywood remakes. The writer likely didn’t realize they’d remade Straw Dogs and replaced Dustin Hoffman with James Marsden. I like Marsden a lot, but the plot — about an emasculated husband who has to fight back against house invaders after they rape his wife — makes a lot more sense starring the tiny Hoffman than it does starring Marsden, who has played a freaking superhero! Unless it’s the Expendables themselves invading his house, it’s hard to see Marsden being the underdog. The guy is jacked enough that it didn’t seem out of place when he shot lasers out of his eyes and fought a bunch of evil mutants, so handling a couple of Southern good ol’ boys shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

Maybe they should’ve just cast Gosling.