Driven by creative brilliance!!!

Rating: 9/10 (10 August 2013)

Two years after this movie is released, I sit down to watch it, for the first time, in the early evening with the false impression that I'm watching a kind of remake of Walter Hill's late-seventies cult classic 'The Driver'.
Now that I know it's based on a 2005 novel, I can safely say that it's more a most unabashed tribute, bearing similarities in characters and filmmaking style. Nicholas Winding-Refn, you have done a fantastic job, not just in bringing a classic to a new audience, but by also making one of the most quality thrillers I have seen.
This is also the first Ryan Gosling film I have been able to appreciate and good god, does he deliver. It's not just that he had the element of surprise over me, Gosling and Winding-Refn seem to have a legendary working relationship in the making. Film and actor direction are a tight unit in Drive and a testament to conveyance of character psychology.
Drive is the story of a Hollywood stunt driver and garage mechanic by day and a getaway driver for hire by night. The mysterious and somewhat lonely "Driver" finds himself enchanted by the arrival of a mother and young son until their husband/father gets out of jail and brings trouble with him.
Throw in a shaky deal by Driver's manager (Bryan Cranston) and the local mob bosses (Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman) and a robbery set up with disastrous consequences, and Driver is thrust into a deadly face-off with the LA mob, in his efforts to protect the young family he has become so attached to.
What's brilliant about Drive is how it's sold to the audience. It's a neat, colourful and musical package that could easily come off as a Grand Theft Auto movie based in the 80's and yet we do not expect the level of thrills, drama, quality action, violent extremity and sheer psychotic shocks.
If you're one for a good psychological thriller cleverly sugar-coated in pretty pink romance, and you're most likely to be delighted by how demented a movie can become, see this! It easily could be Walter Hill, but it could also be Alfred Hitchcock also. The support cast is brilliant, and combined with the retro style and comic book storytelling, all of these things work to create a movie you feel like you've seen before even though you're likely to be shocked and surprised.
We really could do with more of this, and with a budget of $15,000,000, its formula really does threaten to kerb stomp the poor competition of recent blockbusters.
Thank you!