THE MASTERPIECE
We reassess the greatest films of all time
Take that,
Bullitt! The iconic Second Street Tunnel chase.
Alamy, Getty Images
The Driver
AFTER MAKING HIS directorial debut with 1975’s bare-knuckle boxing/crime drama Hard Times, aka The Streetfighter, Walter Hill helped kickstart the modern action movie with his sophomore feature, transforming the simple story of an ace getaway driver and the cop after him into a lean, stylish, elegiac, high-octane thriller. “Suddenly the action movie was more adult,” Hill would recall of his inspiration. “You could make crime movies without cops, with criminals as protagonists. They were darker, less melodramatic, more influenced by Europe.”
Hill had written The Driver with Steve McQueen in mind. But the Great Escape actor, who’d starred in Sam Peckinpah’s The Getaway, which Hill also scripted, passed, claiming he didn’t want to do “another car thing” after Bullitt. So Hill wound up with Ryan O’Neal, on a hot streak after Love Story, What’s Up, Doc? and Paper Moon; he had previously appeared in the Hill-penned The Thief Who Came To Dinner and was looking to stretch himself and break out of his romantic-comedy box. O’Neal saw The Driver as, well, the perfect vehicle for him.