Drive (film)/WMG

The Driver is a more Morally Ambiguous Counterpart to Frank Martin.
The Driver and Frank have have a lot of similarities. Both are stoic bad ass drivers who like to keep to themselves, they have very few friends (though Driver really only has one), and both are implied to have a dark past. Even though both are stoics, Driver does not say much compared to Frank. The differences is that Frank has a special forces background, is not as cruel to his enemies, and has a calmer personality. The Driver on the other hand has rage issues, is way more vicious to his enemies (there quick but very brutal), is way more of a sociopath, and is not much of a people person. There driving styles also differ: The Driver plays more so cat and mouse with his chasers; Frank likes to draw out and maneuver his chasers. While both have many differences, the two are morally ambiguous characters whom love the thrill of high speed driving.

The Driver is simply just nuts.
Any Dark and Troubled Past the dude might've had was simply brought on by his mental disorder. His childlike demeanor implies, to some, that he's somewhere on the Autism spectrum, but that gives way to a much darker, angrier, more murderous side. It's hinted at, vaguely, that The Driver moved to L.A. to start a new identity, and by the end of the movie he's ready to do it again. He probably started this nomadic lifestyle after killing his family, or getting them killed, and moved from town to town every few years, supporting himself by doing the only thing that brings him real happiness - driving.

The Driver is a Terminator.
Ryan Gosling's primary, simply billed as Driver, is an advanced cybernetic organism from the future. He is sent back in time with the mission of protecting a key figure in the resistance: Benicio, the young boy living down the hallway in his apartment complex. However, a miscalculation sends him six years too far into the past. With no recourse to change his situation and a mission still looming in front of him, he settles in Los Angeles. Understanding that his intervention is not necessary until the year in which he was originally intended to arrive, he sets about finding ways to facilitate the task at hand.

He tracks down one of his primary contacts, Shannon, and they form a working relationship that allows him to blend in and obtain an apartment close to the one Irene and Benicio occupy. When Shannon observes The Driver's skills behind the wheel, he finds him work as a stunt driver. Shannon, hoping to capitalize on The Driver's looks and looking to break away from his nefarious entanglements, enrolls him in acting classes in the hopes of getting him bigger parts down the line. The Driver's programming allows for him to process minute human characteristics and emulate them: he is capable of learning and displaying emotion, though somewhat thinly; he creates more natural, somewhat stylized speech patterns and vernacular and can affect different dialects and languages; he can appear to engage in basic necessary behaviors such as eating, drinking, and sleeping. This programming, along with the acting classes and Shannon's mandated diet of action/chase films, leads to The Driver creating a personality, gleaned from everything from Alain Delon in Le Samourai to Steve McQueen in Bullit. This provides The Driver a better opportunity to gain Irene and Benicio's trust without revealing what he really is, as his mission is more infiltration/escort quest than simple search-and-destroy.

Shannon also sets him up with jobs as a wheelman, which he accepts to gain a better understanding of the layout of LA's criminal underworld and to gain the reputation necessary for his role in later events. While he knows the boy will be compromised at some point, it is not known to him where the threat originates, though he knows it to be the result of. By using Shannon and his contacts, he is able to assemble a list of candidates responsible for the potential murder of Benicio. Because preemptive strikes against high level crime bosses would create a power vacuum and destabilize the time loop, The Driver is programmed to refrain from violence or even carrying a weapon until the trigger event, and being so far off from this, it leaves him with little more to do than work odd jobs for Shannon and perfect his human persona.

Years of functioning under an assumed personality leaves The Driver in something of a state of software crisis when he arrives at the time to which he was originally intended to be sent. He is teetering on becoming self-aware, and his prime directive leaves him somewhere close to feeling an attachment to Irene and Benicio. The awkward, not quite right smiles are becoming more frequent, like a glitch or an involuntary tic, when he interjects himself into Irene and Benicio's lives. He's forming habits like going into the same diner for pie and visiting the LA River culvert even when it doesn't serve the purpose of making him appear more human to any of his primaries.

Once he has begun to earn their trust, he takes Irene and Benicio along to the culvert, where the weight of humanness crashes down upon him harder than ever. It is only when Irene informs The Driver that her husband, Standard, is due to be released from prison in a week that the imminence of his mission snaps into focus.

When The Driver later discovers Standard beaten and bloodied in a parking garage with his son standing feet away, presumably a witness to the crime, the objective kicks in. He inserts himself as the wheelman in the robbery of a pawn shop to free Standard from the debt he owes for protection while in prison, knowing. During the robbery,

Rather than take the practical route and find out who is responsible for this event from, The Driver's learned instinct kicks in, and his actions take on a considerably more action-heroic tone. He knows that the boy is not yet in imminent danger, so the unconscious urge to be part of a Frankenheimer-esque chase sequence doesn't come into direct conflict with his prime directive. The gray morality, which he earlier considered abandoning for some idyllic existence with Irene and Benicio when asked by a former client about another job, comes roaring back, and the cool calculation with which he  suggests a synthesis of The Driver's core robotic nature and his James Dean-via-John Rambo personality. He's remembering the violence he is not just capable of, but now intended for, and he's inflicting it in increasing extremes and using borrowed concepts in doing so, all while maintaining the same level of utter detachment.

Prior to stepping onto the elevator, The Driver implores Irene to take the money from the heist and use it to get away with Benicio. This is to ensure that no harm will come to them, and he does this in full confidence knowing that she will not accept, as acceptance would lead to a drastic change in the progression of events leading to Judgment Day and Benicio's involvement with the resistance. He offers to come with her because the humanity that is infecting his system wants The Driver to be there with her, but it also serves as a fail-safe in the event of the improbability that she would take the offer. On the elevator, The Driver recognizes that the man in the lift with them is a hostile target, the light takes on a different quality, and he pulls Irene to the side and kisses her. This is as much the human persona taking The Driver over as it is the goal-oriented machine doing the one thing he has learned will keep her with him and out of danger: a physical display of romantic affection. Though it works, it is quickly derailed when. The look of something like shock that registers on The Driver's face is the machine's attempt to show remorse and lull Irene back into a state of comfort.

Inevitably, when  ensures that Irene and Benicio will have no harm come to them, The Driver can only stare blankly into the future that both his final phone call to Irene and  's speech portend for him. From the latter:

When they reach the parking lot,

And with that, The Driver comes close to or grows to be, as the song played over the culvert scene and final scenes suggests, a real human being and a real hero.


 * Although not my headcannon, this is a very good piece of writing and a very persuasive essay on how the Driver is a terminator. Well done, very well done.

The Continuum are actually after the artificial Maker, not the Ring Drive

 * The artificial Maker which the Rogue Maker created was installed in the ship which was found by Conrado Cruz, the first emperor. The continuum were willing to kill their most talented Maker over having created an artificial Maker, so it's possible they're trying to finish the job.