DRIVE: warning - contains scenes of extreme violence and coolness

DRIVE is so cool it hurts.

Everything about this production screams art house - from the stylized depiction of Los Angeles by night to Ryan Gosling's enigmatic driver to the lingering camera shots, DRIVE should be the antithesis to the 'Fast and Furious' franchise yet it isn't. This is a film that will appeal to the multiplex crowd if they'll just give it a chance.
Gosling plays the unnamed driver, a stunt driver for the movies, and garage mechanic who moonlights as a getaway driver for hire for criminals who don't have their own vehicle.He's a man of few words and is given to bouts of lengthy looking, sometimes at nothing in particular. It gives him an air of mystery which is perhaps not quite warranted.
The driver opens up a little when he befriends Irene (Carey Mulligan), a young woman with a young son who lives in the neighboring apartment. Her husband (the wonderfully named 'Standard') is in jail and she welcomes a man about the house who's willing to act as a father figure to her son. When Standard is released the driver's unwilling to give up his role as Irene's guardian angel and agrees to act as Standard's driver in a raid that will pay off a debt he owes some gangsters, but the raid goes wrong and the driver finds himself a hunted man with a price on his head.
All of this plays out at a pace that belies the tension in the story. The driver is a man surviving on his wits and his skill behind the wheel, putting himself into increasingly dangerous situations with an insouciance that borders on madness. Gosling is superb, oozing attitude and menace, and creating a character who is equally believable reading Irene's son a bedtime story, and stomping a man to death in an elevator.

Extreme violence is this film's other notable characteristic. It's unleashed suddenly and frequently with a graphicness usually reserved for those slasher movies where teenagers unwisely decide to split up to search for their missing friend. What's most surprising is that some of the most sadistic violence is at the hands of comedy actor Albert Brooks. He's almost unrecognisable here but very effective as an LA gangster boss who's thin veneer of charm barely conceals an utter ruthlessness.
The other star of DRIVE is Los Angeles itself. To the accompaniment of Cliff Martinez' 80s inspired electro-synth soundtrack, director Nicolas Winding Refn's camera glides along nocturnal streets and over the downtown skyscrapers creating a glamorous neon lit city of mystery and danger. Most impressively in an urban jungle of 9 million plus souls he finds empty spaces where the action can unfold unwitnessed by casual passers-by. It's a City of Angels that'll be all too familiar to watchers of 'Collateral' which is the blockbuster that DRIVE most closely resembles.
An impressive fusion of art house and multiplex, DRIVE also confirms Ryan Gosling's reputation as one of cinema's most interesting and adaptable leading men. Strap yourself in and prepare for one hell of a ride!