Nothing Extraordinary....!!!

Rating: 5/10 (25 January 2014)

An average movie,nothing you haven't seen before,can be avoided.
Action sequences are few and far between and the story itself is done completely by the numbers; excavating only stereotypical behaviour and gratuitous violence from the flimsily drawn out characters. Think of a Tarantino movie you liked, then strip away the interesting characters, the music, the daring plot and sharp dialog. What is left is good cinematography and an incredibly cool choice of font for the end credits.
There's no shortage of great performers in this movie, and they're mostly wasted. Ron Perlman is so awesomely menacing! And so completely under-written! And what's there is clichéd! God, what were these people thinking? Bryan Cranston has a supporting role as Gosling's partner/boss. A huge opportunity is wasted when his character's interest in the stolen money is just casually discarded. That might have actually GONE somewhere. As a "Breaking Bad" fan, I know just how good he can be, but the writing here is nowhere near as good, and his character, as well, is left adrift.
First the good: Drive is cast with excellent actors. Now for the bad. Based on this picture you would not know that most of the cast could act at all. Gosling's performance makes wooden seem lifelike. This must be due to direction because Gosling has been in several recent pictures and has acted up a storm in all of them. Gosling, Mulligan, Cranston, Brooks, and Hendricks are all interesting, accomplished actors. My question is: how did they get sucked into this horrible picture? Either the script that was shot was different from the script they read, or they had guns pointed at their heads.