Fascinating

Rating: 7/10 (6 November 2011)

This is a flawed if fascinating movie with "future cult classic" written all over it.
To begin with, it doesn't look like anything else, only then it does. "Drive" shows flashes of prime David Lynch (Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive), spaghetti Sergio Leone (Fistful of Dollars), Hong Kong ultra-violence and 1971 Kowalski, lacquered with the gloss of a sleek car commercial. I'm not sure if director Refn really designed it that way, I'm not sure it works, but it is interesting, to say the least.
In such a high-concept environment, the actors seem almost secondary. You'd be hard pressed to call Ryan Gosling the star of this movie; he hardly stars. The script is astonishingly weak. If anybody should win an Oscar, it's sound designer Cliff Martinez.
About the score... A lot of reviewers cite its "80s retro" sound. I'm not sure if they were thrown off by the opening credits (which are very 80s), but the music has the analogue synth sound which is a hallmark of the 70s. This sound made a comeback in the late 90s with Air and Boards of Canada, but was notably absent in the 80s.