"The Golden Child" Is A Cool Fantasy Action-Comedy. "The Driver" Features Impressive Car Chases.

[philosoraptor42]

The Golden Child (1986)

There's a lot of horror elements here. In fact you might just about argue that this Eddie Murphy vehicle is in fact a horror comedy. Charles Dance is as awesome as ever as the central demonic villain, while Eddie Murphy's job is to find lost children. The child that's missing? A Tibetan spiritual saviour, essentially a magical Buddhist rinpoche, whose destiny will affect (you guessed it) the fate of the entire world.



So Eddie Murphy does some investigating into what appear to be Satanic rituals, is told he's the chosen one, has a bizarre dream, and gets taken by his kick-ass female asian sidekick to Nepal to uncover a special magical knife.

We have pretty neat effects, particularly the stop-motion dancing coke can (no seriously, it's awesome). Did I say Charles Dance was awesome? Well he is.



Eddie Murphy's one-liners are a bit hit and miss, but he still acts as an appropriate goofy central protagonist here. The plot is a pretty basic A to B affair. While some of the effects are slightly less effective than others, Eddie Murphy's comedic lines have dated a lot worse.



But overall this is a great fun film and well worth checking out. If you want a bit of silly entertainment, you could do a lot worse. Probably the best Eddie Murphy film I've seen. (Asides from possibly a Shrek film or two?)

B-



The Driver (1978)

This ended up going on my rental list when "Drive" came out and I'd kind forgotten it was there. I actually found that a more fitting predecessor to "Drive" was actually Michael Mann's "Thief" rather than "The Driver". Still there was a place where I'd seen this movie referenced. There's actually a computer game based on the movie "The Driver" because it's actually mostly known for its car chases and car stunts.

The premise is that there's a guy who acts as the driver during various heists who keeps eluding the police. One police detective has decided that he's willing to go to extra lengths, risking his badge, in order to take down this criminal. The corrupt police detective is played by Bruce Dern who I now know from a whole big selection of films, mostly ones from Joe Dante ("The 'Burbs", "Small Soldiers", "The Hole"), but also Hitchcock's "Family Plot" and a small but significant cameo in Tarantino's "Django Unchained".



Bruce Dern is pretty great as the dodgy police detective who is willing to bend.... no, break, definitely 'break' the rules, in order to take down the man he knows is guilty. The script may have to go to extreme lengths to make the detective into a villain, but Bruce Dern does a fantastic job with this smarmy, corrupt, single-mind and over-confident character.

The central character however is the driver himself. I don't recoginise the actor Ryan O'Neal from anything and I wouldn't say he exactly gave an amazing performance, but he does okay as a strong silent type. There is a connection with "Drive" to the extent that this driver protagonist makes the role of 'driver' seem like a much more central role in a heist than the role would normally be viewed. That heightened status of the role of the driver can also be found in the "Transporter" movies starring Jason Statham.



But the major highlights of this film are the scenes involving cars, but strangely I think my favourite scene is not a car chase at all. Instead it's a car stunt scene with no chasing involved. Some criminals decide to doubt whether the protagonist is really as good as his reputation would suggest. So he gives them a demonstration, travelling at high speeds, in a mostly-empty multi-storey car park full of pillars... For me, this scene was the real highlight of the film and I thought that was great fun.



Overall this film is a little overly cheesy, but there's a certain extent that, if the plot were just a teensy bit better (particularly in the third act) then I think I would have absolutely loved this movie, cheese and all.

In the end, as the "Driver" videogame adaptation shows, this film is pretty much only worthwhile for its chase scenes. It's not in any way a movie that I could take seriously. Still, I'm really not a car person and I have to say that the car scenes were still very entertaining.

C+