I have mixed feelings about this film.

Rating: 5/10 (7 April 2013)

On the one hand, there is some directorial brilliance in it, and the cinematography is brilliant. It's beautifully stylized, the work of an auteur. However, it also contains some EXTREME violence, to the point that it was very disturbing to me and I wished I hadn't seen it (the motel scene, elevator scene to name but two of the five or six scenes containing extreme violence). Some people might be able to stomach it, but it was so gruesome & graphic that I really truly wish that I hadn't seen it. I am of the opinion that excessive violence is not needed to tell a story.
Moving on to the actual story, I found that it dragged in places, particularly around the 30-40 minute mark, where I began to wonder "is this going to go anywhere"? Then the story lines slowly developed, but remained however a bit under-developed. But for the kind of movie that it is, I don't think this is particularly a handicap; this type of violent action thriller doesn't need a deep story; some high speed car chases and shootouts apparently will do just fine.
Ryan Gossling's understated portrayal of his character was both a bit confusing and brilliant. He says so little during most of his scenes that it had me wondering, "is there any emotional depth to this character?" That question was soon answered in the way that Gossling proceeds to pick off his adversaries one by one, which was kind of bad-ass. Part of the main story line was a bit muddled (for me anyway), and again, I just wish that I had known about the violence ahead of time so that I could have looked away during certain scenes. Extreme violence is apparently this director's trademark.
To summarize: again there was some brilliance in this film, but I wish that they had focused more on developing the story and in finding alternate ways of portraying the story than resorting to the shock value of such extremely disturbing violence. That's why I only gave it 5 stars.