Review: Drive

This just might be the best movie of the year so far. But I'm not sure yet. Ask me again once I've thought about it for a bit longer, but it's definitely up there. 

Nicholas Winding Refn's Drive is a stylish, visceral, and moody film. It's not the action movie that its trailer might lead you to believe, however. The first half of the film is essentially a romance between Ryan Gosling's unnamed silent protagonist and his neighbor, played by Carey Mulligan. Much of the films first few reels are spent showing Ryan Gosling driving through the streets of LA, while electro-pop with a bit of a retro feel surrounds the audience. These such scenes create the sense that the driver is simultaneously devoid and full to the brim with emotion. The two leads provide excellent performances accompanied by a phenomenal supporting cast including Oscar Isaac, Ron Perlman, and Albert Brooks.

Then, suddenly, everything goes wrong and Drive shoves off its romantic trappings and becomes a fully fledged crime drama. An extremely violent one at that. But what makes the film so great is not just the transformation that it goes through, but the fact that it is able to sustain the same tone throughout. The tension is most certainly higher, but it still feels like the same movie.

There isn't much I can say about Refn's work, as there is very little to criticize. I'll just cut it off here. Drive gets an A+