In the phenomenal action thriller Drive, Ryan Gosling plays a stoic wheelman known only as ‘The Kid.’ With his moral compass and personal relationships in neutral, he moonlights as a getaway driver. Director Nicolas Winding Refn sets an incredible pace, knowing exactly when to sit quietly in the shadows before suddenly revving Drive into fifth gear, tyres screeching.
As newly-acquainted neighbours, Gosling and Carey Mulligan give breathtaking performances. They share a seductive chemistry that grows on vines of stolen glances and meaningful silences until they are blanketed in ivy. Their scenes together are gentle, filled with a tenderness and longing that’s never overplayed.
But their leisurely, sepia-tinted excursions take a dark detour when Mulligan’s husband returns home from prison with debts and dangerous criminals in his wake. Abandoning his instinct for self-preservation, The Kid tries to help, quickly becoming embroiled in the merciless, dog-eat-dog world of drug dealers and thugs. The violence, when it finally arrives, is so shocking, visceral and strikingly shot that it’s physically jarring.

Shot in gorgeous blue and golds that play up the beauty of LA’s cityscapes, Refn’s film blends the striking action and burgeoning romance masterfully. But much like The Kid’s James Dean smirk – complete with toothpick – Drive also invokes a tone of wry amusement, poking fun at the formulaic nature of genre films while managing to elevate their essentials to a level of giddy intensity. As Ron Perlman and Albert Brooks terrify as a pair of mobsters, as a romantic interlude takes place on the racetrack from Grease, as synthesizer music gives the picture an ethereal European quality, Drive is painstaking self-aware, efficient and never less than magnificent.
Wonderfully edgy and superbly acted, Drive flawlessly mixes the exhilarating with the enigmatic to become a heart-poundingly brilliant thrill ride.