"There's a hundred-thousand streets in this city. You don't need to know the route. You give me a time and a place, I give you a five minute window. Anything happens in that five minutes and I'm yours. No matter what. Anything happens a minute either side of that and you're on your own. Do you understand?"

What I liked about Ryan Gosling from the beginning is that he knows enough about film that a look can tell the story just as good as dialogue. And this movie has a lot of looking. And waiting. The hero of the story, a get-away car driver with race car pedigree right off the bat is plunked in a confrontation with the law. A late night Los Angeles theft has occurred. 'Driver' (they don't give him a name) sits in his idling car, wrist watch strapped to the steering wheel with the 5 minute window now dialed in.

 

The thieves scramble out of the building while Driver's police radio relays immediately there's trouble. The law has spotted them somewhere.

For the next 5 minutes Ryan Gosling takes the wheel in a cleverly orchestrated game of cat-and-mouse as he sneaks through the back streets and alleyways around the crime scene. All the while ominous patrol cars with their search lights lurk in the distance. For some strange reason he's tuned into a Clippers basketball game on the radio, about to wind down to its final seconds.

He gets spotted by a helicopter but eludes them under a bridge. Within moments he almost gets away only to be spotted by another patrol car that gives chase. You assume this is it, and there's no way he's going to outrun the police radio within the thickly populated inner city L.A. grid...

 

... but then you understand the importance of the Clippers game. His get away counted on driving straight into the stadium's parking lot just as the game concluded, allowing his car to get smothered up by the multitudes leaving Staples Center as he leaves it behind.

 

One could translate this easily into a sequential story, with the blather coming from the radio nested nicely in little rectangular narration boxes.

Want to know something?

Somebody did it:

Sure enough, it's available as a 32 pager from IDW.

Read Mayfield Eight Part 1: Into the Rat Hole!

Calvin Ryder, a young fry cook agrees to go on a motorcycle road trip to celebrate his birthday. He runs into a Biker Gang: The Banshees!

Read Part One

Read Mayfield Eight Part 2: White Meat!

Trouble ensues for Calvin as his friend conducts a back- room drug deal. He didn't count on it taking place at The Banshee's headquarters!

Read Part Two

Read Mayfield Eight Part 3: Faster, Faster!

The Banshees are onto Calvin and out for revenge. He gets the help of a lone confederate: A woman named Angelina.

Read Part Three
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Buy Mayfield Eight Here:

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