Drive, He Said

The Motion Picture Association of America unsuccessfully attempted to grant the film an X rating due to its profanity and sexual content.[7] Among the scenes criticized were several locker room sequences displaying full-frontal male nudity; a protracted sequence in which Margotta's character, Gabriel, goes streaking through the campus; and a sex scene in which Karen Black's character, Olive, has an orgasm.[7]

The film was entered into the 1971 Cannes Film Festival,[8] where it encountered a stormy reception;[9] The New York Times reported that the movie "set off the most violently negative reaction from an audience at the festival this year. As the lights came up, the people hooted, screamed and whistled. Some got to their feet and waved indignant fists toward where Nicholson and his two actors, William Tepper and Michael Margotta, were seated."[10]

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three stars out of four and called it "a disorganized but occasionally brilliant movie," with the performances being "the best thing in the movie. Nicholson himself is a tremendously interesting screen actor, and he directs his actors to achieve a kind of intimacy and intensity that is genuinely rare. But if Nicholson is good on the nuances, he's weak on the overall direction of his film. It doesn't hang together for us as a unified piece of work."[11] Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote "It is not a great film, but it is an often intelligent one, and it is so much better than all of the rest of the campus junk Hollywood has manufactured that it can be indulged in its sentimental conventions."[12] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film his highest grade of four stars and wrote "The dialog and acting are of the highest calibre...The script respects each character, and the actors deliver fresh, unpredictable performances."[13] Variety called it "an uneven film" with "a bombastic, racy, pellmell style touching on all that has gone before, but with a modern ring which may appeal to youthful audiences."[14] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times wrote of Nicholson's direction: "I think it is an unusually impressive debut. What is least surprising, I suppose, is that Nicholson works extremely well with his actors and has evoked several performances of outstanding quality."[15] Gary Arnold of The Washington Post wrote "While it's not an untalented picture, it is an exasperating and finally insufferable one, because none of its potentially interesting themes or characters ever takes hold...For short periods of time it's possible to persuade yourself that something interesting might come of the athletic theme or the romantic theme or the political theme, but the movie never takes you up on it."[16]

Pauline Kael, looking back on the film in 1978, called it "perhaps the most ambitious, chaotic, and daring of the counterculture films—it had a deranged, dissociated vitality. Though Nicholson couldn't pace it or bring it together, he did seem to have control of the actors, and you knew that nobody was just trying to charm you—they were all trying to get something new on the screen."[17] A later assessment from Steven H. Scheuer found the film "utterly downbeat, and unfortunately dated".[18] Leonard Maltin's home video guide awarded two-and-a-half stars out of four and found the film "confusing", and while he also praised the acting performances, he found that the film "loses itself in its attempt to cover all the bases".[19]

The film holds a score of 57% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 14 reviews.[20]

In 2010, the film was issued on DVD and Blu-ray by the Criterion Collection, as part of the "America Lost and Found" box set, which features a number of other films produced by BBS Productions, including Head (1968), Easy Rider (1969), Five Easy Pieces (1970), A Safe Place (1971), and The Last Picture Show (also 1971).[21] Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment issued a standalone DVD as part of the Sony Pictures "Choice" Collection on June 4, 2013.[22]