Drive

Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn

(R)

****

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If Drive sounds, on paper, like style over substance, “well, it unabashedly is,” said Rafer Guzmán in Newsday. From its synth-rock soundtrack to its polished and stylized cinematography, this recent Cannes award winner nods often to 1980s-era “crime noirs.” And that’s not a bad thing. Ryan Gosling stars as Driver, and he’s just that: a movie stunt driver by day and a getaway heist driver at night. He appears impervious to emotion until we watch him fall for a single mom. Not that Drive is a love story, said Claudia Puig in USA Today. Driver is a fairy-tale character—“a protector of the innocent and punisher of evildoers” who turns suddenly violent when one after-hours gig goes against script. Gosling is terrific throughout, said Ann Hornaday in The Washington Post. Channeling his inner De Niro and McQueen, he delivers “a nervy, understated ode to one of Hollywood’s most cherished archetypes, the sad-eyed man of few words.” Both he and his deft director manage to pay homage to the past “while reinvigorating the genre with style, smarts, and flashes of wit.”