Programmer's Note

Taking stock of Nicolas Winding Refn’s previous works — the Pusher trilogy, Bronson, Valhalla Rising — it’s clear that the Danish director is an expert at spinning tales of hard men and the underworld. In Drive, Refn combines a slick, neon-lit aesthetic with a pulsating synth score and a badass swagger, paying homage to Euro-crime icon Jean- Pierre Melville and auteurs of L.A. noir like Michael Mann (Thief ) and William Friedkin (To Live and Die in L.A.), but in service of something uniquely his own.

Ryan Gosling stars as Driver, a quiet man whose utilitarian name doubles as a job description. By day, he works as a Hollywood stunt driver, performing death-defying feats. By night, he steers getaway cars, offering clients five minutes of drive time before they’re thrown out on their own. Driver is the best at what he does. The type of man you can’t underestimate, he’s calm and cool behind the wheel, a tightly coiled emotional cipher.

Driver’s solitude is compromised when he gets entwined with his neighbour Irene (Carey Mulligan) and her young son. Irene’s ex-con husband, Standard (Oscar Isaac), returns home, burdened with debts to past associates. When thugs threaten Standard’s family, Driver accepts a job to help him out, but the supposedly simple caper ends with smashed cars, shotgun blasts and bloodsplattered walls. Driver is left holding a bag of dirty money.

In adapting James Sallis’ novel of the same name, Refn steers clear of the pitfalls His skilful direction is complemented by Gosling’s understated, surprisingly steely performance as the honourable anti-hero, evoking the hard-to-ruffle demeanor of a young Steve McQueen. Theirs is a collaboration that will hopefully continue.

Featuring great supporting turns from Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman as Hollywood mobsters, Drive is one lean, mean machine, with no time for the sort of baggage that might decelerate its exhilarating forward momentum. Refn won the Best Director Award in Cannes for Drive, proving that when the action genre is well crafted, it is indeed art.