Trama

A getaway driver becomes the latest assignment for a tenacious detective.

"The Driver" is a specialist in a rare business: he drives getaway cars in robberies. His exceptional talent prevented him from being caught yet. After another successful flight from the police, a self-assured detective makes it his primary goal to catch the Driver. He promises remission of punishment to a gang if they help to convict him in a set-up robbery. The Driver seeks help from "The Player" (Isabelle) to mislead the detective.—Tom Zoerner <Tom.Zoerner@informatik.uni-erlangen.de>

In Los Angeles, a mysterious driver (Ryan O'Neal) is a sad man of few words that drives getaway car in robberies. One day, he participates of a heist of a casino and a player (Isabelle Adjani) is the main witness. However, she tells to the detective (Bruce Dern) in charge of the investigation that the suspect is not the driver of the getaway car. The detective becomes obsessed to arrest the driver and he seeks out a gang that has robbed a supermarket and promises to "forgive" their heist if they help him to arrest the driver in a bank robbery. But the player helps the driver to exchange the dirty money.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

In Los Angeles, a young man, a getaway Driver for hire, is confident in his abilities which includes being able to outwit those who may be in pursuit, most likely the police. As such, he has professional standards, can pick and choose which jobs he will do, can command top dollar for his services, and has never been caught with the police not knowing who he is. He has a Handler, she who organizes those behind-the-scenes items that his associates do not need to know for him to carry out his work successfully. She has however stated that she will not risk her life for him. He will not tolerate associates who do not carry out the robberies according to plan. It is because of one of those errors by his associates in carrying out a casino robbery that the Driver knows that one of the casino Players got a good glimpse of him before he was able to get away. The Driver will have to understand and work to the motivations of the Player to elude capture. A police Detective investigating the casino robbery is however certain that the Driver was involved in the casino robbery, as well as was the getaway driver for several other high stakes robberies, this certainty about which he is up front with the Driver. He will have to get a positive identification from the Player for a conviction specifically for the casino robbery. In addition, the Detective decides he will set up an unauthorized sting to nab the Driver in action. The sting involves co-opting captured robbers to carry out a real life robbery, with them hiring the Driver to orchestrate and conduct the getaway. Despite the Detective being confident that the sting will work, his police associates are less confident, they knowing that anything going wrong, including anyone being able to get away with the money and/or someone innocent being killed, will certainly mean their badges. The Driver, who knows that the Detective is out for him, has to decide how much he will risk for the bigger than usual reward, which includes knowing that he outwitted the Detective at his own game.—Huggo

In a desolate parking garage, The Driver casually opens a car with a shim, hot wires its ignition and drives away. In a casino, The Player deals a hand of poker, places her bet, then leaves the table to cash in her tokens while The Driver waits outside in the stolen car. As The Player exits through security, two thieves knock out the guard and proceed to rob the casino. She watches as the two robbers pile into the car and The Driver takes off and an aggressive car chase ensues around the city, with the outcome having The Driver accelerating towards two oncoming police cars, forcing them off-course and enabling The Driver to make a clean getaway. He takes the stolen car to a junkyard to dispose the evidence, leaving his shim inside, and collects his cash. The next day, The Detective and his two plainclothes partners pull the car out of the junkyard and find the shim.

In a police line-up, the witnesses are unable to identify The Driver, including The Player, who insists he is not the same man she saw at the casino. Undeterred by the lack of a witness, The Detective still believes The Driver is guilty and unsuccessfully tries to extract a confession out of him at a bar, instead vowing to catch him eventually. Later that night, a gang of amateur thieves rob a local supermarket and make an awkward getaway with a different getaway driver, who used to be a former partner of The Driver. After getting caught, The Detective offers a deal to the gang's head thief, Glasses: if he agrees to cooperate in a sting operation to set up The Driver, he will be released without imprisonment. Although one of the plainclothes policemen, partnered with The Detective, is hesitant about the covert plan to stage a bank robbery, The Detective threatens to blackmail him if Glasses does not participate.

Later, when The Driver meets The Player to deliver her payment, the Detective visits her apartment. Hiding in the bedroom, The Driver overhears The Detective's attempts at forcing The Player to identify The Driver, but she refuses, despite his threats to expose her past transgressions. At a bar, The Driver meets The Connection, who tells him about a prospective group of clients. Although he expresses no interest in working with shooters,, he meets them in a parking garage. To convince them of his abilities, he maneuvers them around the garage, nearly destroying their stolen Mercedes. Although the team is convinced of his skill, The Driver turns down the job. Later, one of the shooters, Teeth, attempts to persuade The Driver to take the job at gunpoint, but The Driver knocks him down a stairwell and reiterates his refusal. In an effort to convince The Driver, The Detective goes to his apartment, offers him the shim he left behind in the junked car, and proposes a game: If The Driver successfully pulls off the heist, he gets to keep the money, but if The Detective catches him, he will win the satisfaction of putting The Driver in prison.

Taking the shim, The Driver accepts The Detective's challenge. When he tells the shooters that he has doubled his price, The Driver also stipulates that Teeth cannot be included in the operation. Glasses then reports to The Detective that they have made a deal with The Driver, but demands The Detective fulfills his end of the deal, with he Detective demanding back that there be no shooting during the heist. The subsequent bank robbery, however, goes awry. When one of the thieves triggers the alarm, Glasses shoots him and leaves him behind for the police, before escaping in The Driver's getaway car. After arriving in an empty warehouse garage, Glasses holds The Driver at gunpoint, assuming that he is unarmed, and tells him that the heist was a police set-up. The Driver also pulls a gun and shoots Glasses dead. After The Driver leaves with the cash, Teeth shows up at the scene on a motorcycle and discovers Glasses' dead body.

The Driver stashes the cash in a locker at Union Station, checks into a cheap hotel and meets up with The Connection, who agrees to arrange an exchange of the dirty money for laundered money. Later, The Kid holds up The Connection in her apartment. After shoving his gun down her throat, she reveals the Driver's hideout and the location of the cash, but is killed anyway. The Player shows up at The Driver's hotel room and tries to persuade him to lay low and wait six months before getting the cash, but he says that he wants to play out his game with The Detective regardless. Later, she swaps locker keys with an Exchange Man at Union Station while one of The Detective's plainclothes partners describes the interaction to him over a payphone. After retrieving the cash from the locker, the Exchange Man boards a leaving train, but is followed by The Detective, looking for a suitcase that matches his plainclothes partner's description. After an altercation in the train's bathroom, the Exchange Man is shot dead by The Detective and falls out a window.

As The Player leaves Union Station, Teeth steals her purse and makes off with the locker key holding the laundered cash. Outside, The Driver waits for her in a car and they chase after Teeth. The treacherous pursuit through downtown Los Angeles concludes in a warehouse, where the two cars play a game of cat and mouse. When The Kid and his hired driver make a break to exit, they are confronted by The Driver, who accelerates towards them head-on. As their car swerves, it flips over and gets destroyed, but Teeth refuses to give up and The Driver is forced to shoot Teeth dead when he draws his gun. After collecting The Player's purse and letting Teeth's driver go free, The Driver returns to Union Station to retrieve the cash. Opening the suitcase, The Driver looks behind to see The Detective, his plainclothes partners, and a brigade of police officers waiting to arrest him. As The Player watches, The Detective smugly declares his victory, but his self-satisfaction quickly turns to anger when The Driver presents him with an empty case, commenting that they have both been swindled. The Driver then walks away a free man.