A homage to the 80s that sometimes borders on the farcical.

Rating: 7/10 (15 September 2011)

From the moment the movie starts there is a sense of the familiar and yet unfamiliar as our eerily calm protagonist avoids capture in a intelligent car chase probably more realistic than anything shown on screen in recent years.
The direction and cinematography of the movie is smart, creating a vision of LA that seems familiar from movies such as Collateral and Terminator 2. The scene driving though downtown LA with the synthy 80s soundtrack particularly reminiscent of the Foxx/Cruise vehicle.
And yet for all this, the violence in the movie seems to border on farce with way too many visceral over-the-top deaths that don't seem necessary to the plot at all. Perhaps this is also paying tribute to the slew of megakill movies that came out in the 80s (Commando / RoboCop / Red Heat to name a few). Violence isn't portrayed in the same way by Hollywood anymore; it feels cliché, a pastiche.
Ryan Gosling does an impressive turn as an almost unfazeable anti-hero. Carey Mulligan pouts a lot in a dreamy whimsical fashion and is believable in a too young to be a mother way. Ron Perlman totally hams it up in a very enjoyable turn as a shady crook trying to make it big. Bryan Cranston proves once again his versatility in a being a mechanic that constantly gets life decisions wrong making him and others surrounding him pay for it.
Some tighter editing and this movie could have gone the way of being a classic and will certainly do well in the box office.