WARDRIVER – Review by Sarah Ward
Knowing how to hold a moment for a character who is realising that their world is changing forever is an underrated directorial skill. Let the time fly by and the emotional impact won’t land. Linger too long and subtlety drains, the scene filled up to the point of overflowing with obviousness instead. Rebecca Thomas’ two feature films so far, 2012 coming-of-age drama Electrick Children and new thriller Wardriver, might clock in at less than 100 minutes apiece, but they both demonstrate the filmmaker’s talent for doing a Goldilocks and getting these moments just right. Although they share little else beyond Utah as a setting, that knack for pacing, for understanding the potential and the limits of patience, left an imprint when Electrick Children’s 15-year-old fundamentalist Mormon girl said goodbye to her community, and does the same as Wardriver’s hacker is plunged into a thorny theft plot.
Stealing is all in a day’s work for the Salt Lake City-based Cole (Dane DeHaan, American Primeval). It’s his nighttime business, to be accurate. Usually, he’s in his car, armed with his laptop and wi-fi antenna, living up to the film’s name — to wardrive is to roam around at the wheel searching for wireless networks — while emptying payroll funds from retailers and restaurants, losses that banks will reimburse and therefore be the ones out of pocket. Robin Hood instantly springs to mind, then, especially after Cole swaps some of his ill-gotten gains for prepaid gift cards for his neighbor. Penned by Kin and Fast & Furious 9’s Daniel Casey, who was slated to direct before Thomas, Wardriver’s script recognises this link openly; that very comparison with folklore’s famed robber of the rich and giver to the poor is levelled at Cole in the chat thread that’s his standard way of interacting with others.
Wardriver isn’t a screenlife film, aka the genre of movies that unfurl wholly or primarily through computer and smartphone windows. Still, it is just as well-aware as flicks such as Unfriended, Profile, Searching, Missing and fellow 2026 feature Mercy that technology is a filter on reality. Accordingly, Cole is comfortable in his safe space behind his screens, taking from financial institutions with the press of a few keyboard buttons. Then Oscar (Mamoudou Athie, By Design), the doorman at an upscale restaurant that he fleeces, blackmails him into ripping off a regular customer with an $800,000-plus bank balance — and that target, Sarah (Sasha Calle, The Rip), is threatened by her married, mob-connected lawyer boyfriend Bilson (Jeffrey Donovan, Law & Order) to promptly return his money.
While an entry in cinema’s favourite high-octane heist franchise sits on Casey’s resume, Wardriver tailgates another picture that’s stocked with speeding cars and light-fingered antics. A veteran at dipping into thieving, but abiding with strict self-imposed protocols; a romance with a woman already attached to a man who skirts the law; a big new job that’s crucial for helping the girl, but goes against the protagonist’s normal code; ample night-driving scenes, complete with inky skies and glowing lights: so spanned Nicolas Winding Refn’s 2011 neo-noir masterpiece Drive, as does this. As a screenplay, Wardriver has also been floating around for more than a decade. That the movie that results now feels just enough like its own film, and proves sleek and engaging enough, is thanks to its cast and director more than its particular narrative twists. There’s an aptness to the fact that little surprises story-wise, though, because human nature dictates that stealing, cheating, manipulating, deceit and finding it a struggle to do what’s right will always recur.
Similarly constantly repeating, in life and in art, are underdog tales. DeHaan has spent plenty of his early career skewing villainous, but pluck is present in nefarious types and little guys battling bigger forces alike. As Cole, the recent Lisey’s Story, The Staircase, Oppenheimer and Dumb Money star layers in vulnerability as well; determination, resourcefulness and sensitivity is a compelling mix. For Athie, Calle and Donovan, their efforts as Oscar, Sarah and Bilson require fewer gradients and shades, and sometimes none at all. Whereas DeHaan is often at his best solo, conveying the weight of the plot’s latest turn as it falls on Cole, and exploring how he’s endeavouring to respond and cope, his co-stars get their strongest moments when they’re each immersed in conflict.
Thomas has been busy in television in the years between Electrick Children and Wardriver, helming a single episode of Stranger Things, lone chapters of Sweet/Vicious and Everything’s Gonna Be Okay, two Doc instalments, four episodes of the Athie-led Archive 81, and the full ten-instalment runs of Limetown and When the Street Lights Go On. With her feature debut, she not only directed her own screenplay but benefited from her own Mormon upbringing, and showed an eye for emotional specificity. Here, Thomas draws from the TV toolkit. Aided by cinematographer Htat Htut (Not That Jazz) and editor Kristi Shimek (Arcadian), she slips competently into a familiar style; again, Drive looms large, alongside the broader neo-noir, thriller and heist genres. Carving out space for Cole to reckon internally with his situation, and avoiding underplaying and overplaying in the process, remains a key gift on Thomas’ part to her sophomore film. Wardriver doesn’t swerve far from the familiar, but there’s no doubting that its director, like its lead, are committed to the ride.
