The "Drive" Lawsuit is Going to Crash and Burn

The movie "Drive" starring Ryan Gosling was hit with a lawsuit claiming false advertising practices. What a false lawsuit I say! Well, it's real, it's just kooky though.

As laid out in the Hollywood Reporter : Sarah Deming has filed a lawsuit against FilmDistrict claiming that the distributors, "promoted the film Drive as very similar to the Fast and Furious, or similar, series of movies." "Drive bore very little similarity to a chase, or race action film…having very little driving in the motion picture," the suit continues. "Drive was a motion picture that substantially contained extreme gratuitous defamatory dehumanizing racism directed against members of the Jewish faith, and thereby promoted criminal violence against members of the Jewish faith."

It seems she wants her movie ticket money back and for the practice of misleading trailers to be ended.

I agree that some movie trailers are purposely made to be misleading. I disagree that "Drive" is one of them. All of the driving shown in the trailer, happens in the movie, while making no claims to the exact amount of driving per movie run-time ratio. It's not like they inserted footage that was not in the movie. Ryan Gosling's character is a driver in the movie, likes driving, and he is shown driving a more than adequate amount of time. The trailer shows off the more brutal than "Fast an Furious" violence; hello, he is about to hammer a bullet into a dude's head at the end, pretty intimate. It also hints strongly towards the more "artsy" filmmaking approach to be experienced. How? The trailer boots into a sweeping orchestral piece of music and shows Ryan Gosling stomping a dude in the elevator. Right after pulling the girl to him in slow motion. I find nothing misleading about the trailer when compared to the movie, the plot is laid out exactly, and the high octane action moments are totally there in the movie as well. The movie is intense; just not in the glittery "Fast and Furious" way.

Racism? Promoting criminal violence against people of the Jewish faith? So, would the movie have been okay if the characters killed or suffering at the hands of violence were of some other religion or race? Or wouldn't that just be more racism? This claim makes no sense. It would only make sense to say the movie is wrong for showing violence: period. This actually makes the person filing the lawsuit sound racist to me!

At no point did "Drive" give me an anti-Jewish message or make me feel compelled to go commit violence against Jewish people. At no point did I go into the movie thinking it was going to be an over-the-top "Fast and Furious" buddy heist movie either; no long lasting shots of bikini models next to souped up imports at car shows. Maybe we should all start suing movies for not being like other movies or for not catering to the personal opinion and expectations our minds have created for a movie - sarcasm.

"Drive", by the way, in my opinion: is an awesome, rich with atmosphere, dark and moody, character piece, with extreme violence, and romantic relationship notions. It also has an awesome 80s pop sounding soundtrack! It is a movie I kept thinking about long after seeing and will buy it when it comes out on Blu-ray.