The Worst Film Ever

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

I rate David Morrisey as one of the best actors over the last 20 years. He has been in some of the best TV drama series and one offs to put this show 'The Driver' not one of his best.It started out looking good, but got worse as it went on. The storyline turned out a bit too far fetched. Vince, the taxi driver gets involved with an old criminal buddy who has just got out of prison. He then gets invited to a game of cards in the house of the 'Horse' an arch criminal who seems to run Manchester's underworld. Without any knowledge of Vince's capability to join the ranks of wheel-man to gang of heavies, he is on the firm.Vince has problems at home, his son has run off with his girlfriend and joined a religious sect...yawn. He drives the Horse a few times and then is invited to be getaway driver on a heist. In between Vince's buddy has failed to dispatch a drug dealer and Vince pulls the half alive bloke out of a twenty foot deep drain with a tow rope, puts him in the back of his cab and drops him off at the hospital. Cops get involved and Vince strikes a deal to nail the horse.Yep, it all ends up with gang getting their collars felt, Vince's son coming home to mum and dad and the credits appear. Sorry but can't say I enjoyed it. Too silly and the criminals were so useless they would have been locked up years ago.

Taxi driver Vince McKee isn't having the best of times; he is working every night but still isn't earning enough money and the job is utterly depressing. Then his old friend Colin returns after a stretch in prison and is soon trying to get Vince a 'job'. At first he refuses but soon he is working for 'The Horse'; he is just delivering packages but the pay is good and his family are happy, although they don't know where the money is coming from. The Horse always calls before a job but one day Colin turns up saying he is needed; it turns out Colin is to kidnap a rival criminal, beat him and leave him to die. Vince can't cope with that so returns later and takes the severely injured man to hospital. This leads to Colin getting a beating and Vince fearing for his life… it looks as if the only way out for him is to work for the police; crossing The Horse will be incredibly dangerous though.This series got off to a great start as we see Vince driving aggressively to get away from pursuing police… we then flash back to see how he got to that point. The story isn't the most original but it is told in a way that keeps the viewer gripped; right until the final credits began I was unsure what would happen to Vince. This is down to the fine performances; particularly from David Morrissey who plays Vince, the ordinary man in an extraordinary situation and Colm Meaney who plays the menacing Horse. The fact that the series is only three episodes long means there is no time for padding; even the apparently irrelevant subplot involving Vince's son who has joined a cult proves relevant in the end. Overall this was well worth watching; it is probably even better if you watch all three episodes in one go.

The driver starts with a thrilling car chase as Vince McKee (David Morrissey) evades the police in the streets of Manchester. You almost feel this could be akin to the film Drive.Vince life takes an unexpected turn as an old friend Colin (Ian Hart) released from prison gets him to accept an offer to drive for a criminal gang.Vince a taxi driver, sick with the life as a cabbie finds that he is an ordinary man who is in over his head by being a driver for the criminals. His life has taken a turn for the worse since his son joined some kind of cult and he and his wife have drifted apart.Gang leader, The Horse (Colm Meaney) is not a man who stands for nonsense, when a job which leads to a man being shoved in a hole and left for dead goes awry, Vince realises he wants his old life back but the police are also watching him.After a bright opening episode, you realise from the second episode that this three parter has a flimsy plot. Vince is not cut out to be a bad boy, his mistakes lands his friend Colin in a spot of bother and in the final episode the Police have got him and its a case of whether Vince will give the gang up.A disappointment when you realise that this could had been a good 90 minutes film. Meaney, Hart and Morrissey act their parts well, some of the car chase scenes are exciting, there is a lot of grittiness and the scenes where he confronts his son in the cult's home will make your heart cry for Vince but it needed a more solid script.

Although billed as an action-fest, this is actually a far more cerebral piece. With car chases.David Morrissey seems to have cornered the market in family men having midlife crisis (see also "The 7.39"), but this role allows him to show both his sensitive side and imposing physicality. The acting highlights have to be his scenes with the equally great Ian Hart, who he grew up with on Merseyside but had never acted with until now.The rest of the cast are equally on top of their game; with Lee Ross and Chris Coghill providing much needed comic relief. And the first two parts, with their unrelenting pace, need it at times to allow the viewers to draw breath.By the final episode, the various interconnecting plots have hit the rumble strips a little, meaning this is merely great rather than mind- blowing entertainment. But compared to much of what counts as "Original British Drama" on our dumbed-down BBC, it's top-notch.