This movie is not for everyone.

Rating: 10/10 (30 March 2012)

But, this movie is fantastic. Ryan Gosling brings out so much emotion in such an understated way that it is fantastic.
To the point, if you are expecting something in the mold of a Bond, Fast and Furious, XXX mold (extreme CG graphics, cheesy one-liners, and lots of dialogue) then look somewhere else. Not that those films don't have their own time and place, because they do. I do enjoy the occasional bad acting, bang 'em up, shoot 'em up films. But that is not this film.
This film is limited in dialogue, and hands the viewer very little information in terms of back-story and detail. It isn't driven by plot twists, as you can typically predict what is going to happen. In fact, the movie does very little that would be considered ground breakingly new to the cinematic world.
What it does do is give you superb acting, a fantastic, character driven plot, lots of action (chase scenes and violence), and tension that draws you into the film. This is a violent film, but not to the point that the violence dominates the movie or is glorified. In fact, the film almost seems apologetic about the gore. As the title implies, cars are very important to the movie, and every scene involving a car is done fantastically. And there are moments in the movie that left even a sterner, manly man like myself in tears.
Gossling, Mulligan, Cranston, Brooks, Iaasac, and Perlman all play their characters fantastically and it is amazing that none of them, or this move, or its director, Nicholas Winding Refn, didn't win more awards than they did. If you want a break from the in your face Hollywood movies of today, look her. This is your film.