The Thousands

Steve McQueen’s beautifully crafted drama recalls Drive, and not just for transforming Manhattan into the same gritty, jaded demimonde as Refn’s Los Angeles. There should be an APB going out to intense, blue-eyed loners across America: “STAY AWAY FROM CAREY MULLIGAN SHE WILL PIERCE YOUR STYLISH SHELL OF URBAN ALIENATION AND FLOOD YOUR METICULOUSLY EMPTY LIFE.”

Here, Mulligan is cabaret singer Sissy, who shares with her brother Brandon (Michael Fassbender) a troubled past that’s disturbing for only ever being hinted at. In a key scene, dense with meaning, she turns ‘New York, New York’ into a haunting torch song as Brandon watches, eyes aglisten, with his cocky boss David (James Badge Dale).

The production and costume design underline that whatever “bad place” these siblings have escaped has forged them as opposites. She’s brittle, warm, hungry for intimacy and bleeding vulnerability; he’s smooth, cool, chasing isolation through his compulsion for anonymous orgasms, and shying from a coworker, Marianne (Nicole Beharie), whom he might actually like.

Sure, Fassbender’s wang appears in the first five minutes, but for me the siblings’ interdependent antagonism was more poignant and intriguing than Brandon’s overdetermined ‘depravity’. I found the film’s ending subtly hopeful.