Metacritic reviews

The Driver is a film of types and trends; a cinematic expression of our basest narrative impulses. Directed with remarkable economy, the seasoned Hill keeps everything as tight as possible.

A combination of brilliantly edited car chases and existential thriller which recalls the sombreness of Melville and the spareness of Leone in a context which is the 'classical' economy of directors like Hawks and Walsh.

The sparse story of the struggle of the two men with their obsessions, and with each other, skillfully creates a mood that is hard to shake after the ending credits. The car chases are breathtaking.

A visceral symphony of screeching tires and crushing metal.

As ludicrous as the dialogue by screenwriter/director Walter Hill may be, the film's visual scheme is hypnotic. Dark, moody and muscular, its style gets under your skin even if your brain rebels. [21 Aug 1978, p.66]

All of this could have been nice and juicy if Walter Hill had done a few more things with his screenplay, such as made the characters into people.

A fair-to-middling auto-noir with a hole in the middle roughly the size of its leading man’s head.

Director Walter Hill and stunt coordinator Everett Creach have engineered a number of car chases and they are fabulous, if you like car chases.

While we can readily identify these characters, we can't identify with them simply because Hill never bothers to tell us what makes them tick.

Written and directed by Walter Hill, who once wrote and directed a good movie, Hard Times, with Charles Bronson. This one is not good. It is Awful Movie. It is Pretentious Movie. It is Silly Movie. It talks just like this.