A laid back getaway driver (Ryan O’Neal) who’s never been caught becomes the obsession of a vile detective (Bruce Dern), who goes as far as to set up a bank robbery in order to catch him. Along for the ride are The Driver’s manager (Ronee Blakley) and a witness (Isabelle Adjani) he pays off not to identify him. Trans Ams, screeching tires and car chases ensue.

Written and directed by Walter Hill, The Driver gives new definition to “minimalism.” There is no plot, and none of the characters even have names; the main characters are simply The Driver and The Detective. An early cut allegedly featured character development, more chases and was said to have clocked in at two hours, but the release version is only 87 minutes long.

The Driver is a candidate for coolest poster art ever made to promote the biggest nothing of a movie. The work of graphic artist Bob Peak – who also designed one-sheets for Apocalypse Now, Rollerball and The Year of Living Dangerously among many others – the poster is unparalleled cool, and nothing in Hill’s sophomore directorial effort comes close to being that good.

The film is horribly cast, beginning with Ryan O’Neal, who took a part originally written for Steve McQueen. “Ice water in the veins” or “bad ass” are descriptions only the mentally disturbed ever associated with the preppy star of Love Story. Perhaps because he was counting on McQueen, Hill’s script gives The Driver only 350 words of dialogue. Clint Eastwood could have pulled off that kind of silent intensity, but O’Neal never does.

If it was the 1970s, and you needed a jerk or dickweed in your movie, you called Bruce Dern. Here, he’s just doing what Fox paid him to do, playing a stick figure with no redeemable qualities whatsoever. The problem is that the script doesn’t make The Detective very good at his job, or clever in his dialogue. Dern’s character does just two things: talk about how he’s going to nail The Driver, and call anyone who thinks differently an asshole.

The highlight of this cartoon is the tail-end of the climactic vehicle pursuit. O’Neal, driving a Ford pickup, follows the bad guy’s Trans Am into a giant warehouse in L.A. The Trans Am creeps through a maze of palettes and ultimately gets into a game of Chicken with The Driver. The resulting stunt is executed extremely well.

Walter Hill would go on direct an impressive array of hard boiled action films, westerns and musically themed projects throughout the next twenty years, notably The Warriors and 48 HRS. Not all were successful, but they all gave the audience something more than the wishbone sandwich on display here.

Michael Small provided the adequate musical score.