Drive (MA). Director: Nicolas Winding Refn. Starring: Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Albert Brooks, Ron Perlman, Bryan Cranston. 100 minutes
Jerry: I wanted to talk to you about Dr Whatley. I have a suspicion that he's converted to Judaism just for the jokes.
Priest: And this offends you as a Jewish person?
Jerry: No, it offends me as a comedian.
So quips Jerry Seinfeld in one 1997 episode of his self-titled sitcom. Later, Jerry counters Whatley, a dentist, with a joke of his own: 'You know the difference between a dentist and a sadist? Newer magazines!' Jerry's jocular derision subsequently sees him labelled, farcically, as an 'anti-dentite'.
The episode represents one of the more obvious examples of Seinfeld's deflation of overly sensitive attitudes to cultural stereotypes, and of the comedian's healthy levity regarding his own cultural heritage (he and series co-creator Larry David were born to Jewish families in Brooklyn, New York).
It's an odd coincidence that Bryan Cranston, the actor who portrayed Whatley — the object of Jerry's satirical 'anti-dentitism' — more than a decade ago, is among the ensemble supporting cast of Swedish director Nicolas Winding Refn's Hollywood debut, Drive (now showing in Australian cinemas).
The film was, last month, the subject of a lawsuit from a Michigan woman who claimed she had been 'misled' by its promotional trailer. In alleged contrast to the trailer, 'Drive bore very little similarity to a chase, or race action film', claimed Sarah Deming, in her suit against distributor FilmDistrict.
Her claim has been widely derided. One sardonic but salient assessment on blog site The Stir notes that not only does the trailer contain 'scenes that were not filmed inside a vehicle' but it also 'seems to indicate that there's a story ... that doesn't involve people endlessly racing cars'.
However, beyond Deming's dubious claim about the misleading nature of the trailer, she makes a far more serious accusation: that Drive directs 'extreme gratuitous defamatory dehumanising racism' and promotes 'criminal violence' against 'members of the Jewish faith'. This claim bears a closer look.
First it needs to be said that Drive's critical acclaim (Rotten Tomatoes score: 92 per cent) is not misplaced. This is an intense, meditative yet brutally violent film noir about a Hollywood stunt driver (Gosling) who moonlights as a criminal wheelman. It is a stylish, assured, character driven thriller.
We see the impossibly stoic Driver's soft side through his interactions with mechanic mentor Shannon (Cranston), and with attractive prison