OVERVIEW
There is no shortage of passion in Drifter, Sung Kang’s second film as a director. The film may be long, boring, frustrating, and often unintentionally hilarious, but there is little doubt that Kang and everyone around him put everything they had into the project. Unfortunately, sincerity can only compensate for so much. Kang plays Tree, a racetrack janitor living a small, lonely life while still paying off the debts his father left behind. He works for a local criminal organization, keeps mostly to himself, and finds his only real freedom behind the wheel. One day his talent for drifting is discovered, giving him a chance to finally turn things around.
BACKGROUND
Drifter marks a big jump for Kang, who made his directorial debut in 2023, 17 years after breaking out in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. His first film, Shaky Shivers, was a silly, low-budget horror comedy made almost as an experiment to discover whether directing was something he genuinely wanted to pursue or simply a response to his frustration with the lack of acting opportunities. He discovered that he loved it. His second film would be considerably more personal, built around both his lifelong passion for cars and the loneliness and feelings of invisibility he has spoken about experiencing throughout his Hollywood career. Kang brought Drifter to TIFF looking for distribution and personally introduced all four festival screenings, something rarely seen at the festival.
THE REVIEW
Unfortunately, the result sometimes feels like being shown a drawing that a six-year-old spent the entire afternoon making and genuinely believes is the greatest picture ever created. You admire the enthusiasm and how much it clearly means to them, but you still can’t pretend the result is remotely good. Drifter has multiple moments where actors appear to stumble through lines, give broad performances that recall The Room while performing painfully simplistic dialog. Add an extremely predictable, cliché-filled narrative, and you quickly start waiting for the film to end. Unfortunately, that takes nearly two and a half hours.
Making an introspective character interesting is difficult, and Kang struggles badly with it both behind and in front of the camera. There are endless scenes of Tree staring into the distance, silently contemplating whatever profound and wise thoughts the film assumes must be running through his head. It becomes considerably harder to take all that solemnity seriously when he later outright explains what he is feeling while calling his car a she and being named Tree. It is all too silly!
There is also an indulgence in how Kang approaches Tree, as though the audience should automatically care about him simply because he is a poor guy who has suffered. Not only is he too old for the part, but the film gives us very little beyond the idea that Tree is basically the perfect man who was unfairly punished by the world and is now waiting for the world to finally recognize it. All the problems he faces come from the people around him, like his father and friends, rarely from his own doing. The entire criminal storyline is painful to sit through, populated by terrible performances from both the villains and Tree’s friends, before ending with one of the ugliest and most awkward shots of the year.
A bit better is the other half of Drifter, focused on Tree’s rise from anonymous janitor to one of the best drifters in the sport. Here, the film goes through practically every sports movie convention available: the trainer who initially hates him before becoming his biggest defender, practice montages, annoying rivals, and, obviously, the big final competition. Some of the drifting is well-captured, particularly during the climactic event, where Kang brought together professional drivers and thousands of car community members who filmed for free. It looks cool at first, but it gets tiring by the hundredth time.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Drifter is Sung Kang’s love letter to drifting written across what feels like 512 pages, with Kang seemingly expecting you to admire it as clearly as he does. You can feel that passion in practically every frame, but that alone doesn’t make the film good. The performances are terrible, the dialogue is painfully weak, the story is predictable, and several scenes will probably make you laugh unintentionally. Worst of all, it lasts two and a half hours.
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- Where to watch
- Coming soon
- Where to watch
- Coming soon
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