Favorite LA Movies 3

The Driver

Director Walter Hill's The Driver is the veritable A to Z of downtown Los Angeles, a back drop to impossibly long car chases, expertly lensed by d.p. Phil Lathrop. Ryan O'Neal plays a nameless get-away driver, single-mindedly pursued by a conniving detective (actor Bruce Dern). The Bonaventure Hotel and Union Station receive especially long cameos along with some, probably long gone, SRO hotel. Despite the abundance of night driving sequences, Lathrop's photography, while sufficiently source motivated, is always permeable and coherent. Hill's second directorial effort (after 1975's Hard Times), the minimal, neo-noir Driver was released in 1978, a year before Hill's break-out success, the street gang picture The Warriors.