I'm convinced the Driver is special needs or something. Those weird forced smiles at ol' girl and the kid just seemed like he was thinking "PUDDING!!!" or something.

Ryan Gosling annoys the living fuck outta me generally, but he was a bad choice for this role, in particular. The attempt at stoic cool doesn't work with someone as clean-cut/babyfaced as he is. And the fact that there wasn't much in the script to make him a person, or identifiable, and yeah, the movie suffers heavily as a result.

Oddly enough, the most sympathetic characters in the movie for me were Albert Brooks, and Standard. Everybody else was kind of an idiot.