Underwhelming

Rating: 5/10 (26 September 2011)

Had very high hopes for this from the trailer and reviews but my expectations were not met. I was expecting an intelligent thriller with a decent story, strong performances and some great driving scenes.
What I got was an odd thriller with some stylish moments that doesn't work as a whole.
The story treads very little new ground in the 'tough guy develops feelings for a woman / child' school and isn't that well told (the motivations of the gangsters are never that well explained).
Ryan Gosling's character is a man of few words and long pauses, which isn't necessarily a problem but he's also not far off being The Terminator it transpires which is a bit of a stretch when there's no background to support his one man army capability. The gangsters aren't on screen that much - they have a couple of decent villainous scenes but they'll never touch Joe Pesci for menace and violence.
Driving? Opening scene's pretty good, the rest aren't much better than you'd see in any high end, modern US cop show, these ones just have Ryan Gosling in them rather than a TV star.
Some of my disappointment comes from the fact that if you're going to make an L.A. at night movie it's going to draw comparisons with Heat and Collateral. Drive can't hold a candle to these in terms of transporting you into the L.A. underworld.
If you go to see movies for cinematography (the movie seldom looks anything other than great) and performance you'll love it, if you go to see movies for stories and character development, avoid.
I think a lot of people giving this 10 / 10 reviews are the kind of people that just big up anything that isn't mainstream Hollywood - they may use the words 'subtle' and 'nuanced' frequently - beware of these peoples' reviews!!