Drive

I don't know if it was my restless mood or just the movie being unnecessarily slow for me. Sometimes I even wondered if the picture was stuck. It has its charm and atmosphere though. It may be art in its own way, but it lacks excitement. Ryan Gosling has done better work, in my opinion. Of course, it's not his fault. Unfortunately, the script doesn't allow him to show his full glory. Unfortunately, I see it as just average... 3 stars. (22/03/2012)

It’s hypnotic (almost everyone talked about the soundtrack after leaving the movie theater), clings to details (cinematography, sound), and constantly goes against established audience expectations. When I got up from my seat, sweat was pouring off me and it wasn't just the heat in the movie theater. (14/09/2011)

This could have been such a calm and melancholic film. A nice methodical approach to life, no disturbing elements. And then the driver rides in an elevator with the cute neighbor and it all turns upside-down. Nicolas Winding Refn took a fairly typical pulpy, though still quite high-quality, screenplay, and transformed it into a meditation on the life of a not-entirely-normal driver/stuntman. Breathtakingly shot in nighttime L.A. (almost like my favorite, Mann), the glow of neon lights is framed by 1980’s style electronic music, but Refn flirts primarily with the noir genre, although this is a sunlit version, as absurd as that may sound. Blood spatters, engines roar and the silent, inconspicuous scenes involving the two love birds appear surprisingly significant. The cast is perfect. Gosling is surprising in the role of the silent Driver. Carey Mulligan is completely believable as the main protagonist’s fragile/strong motivation. And Bryan "Heisenberg" Cranston is an absolute chameleon. An inconspicuous hit that will grab your attention if you let it. You know the story about the scorpion and the frog? (18/09/2011)

For me, a completely bombastic demonstration of what a director with a vision can do from forgettable genre spectacles. Refn projected his fascination with inaccessible heroes, which is prolonged by passion and also by the fascination with stories in which the hero selflessly sacrifices himself. His pagan relishing of vibrations long after the main action of the shot is once again pure happiness, not to mention the beautifully shot car chases and captivating atmosphere of a Los Angeles night. Again, it should be underlined that for Refn, there is no main logic and story - these are just secondary links to the extremely strong scenes elaborated down-to-the-last detail. I look forward to the listing of all the nonsense that analyst viewers can bear, thinking that there is some consistency and story refinement in Drive. What fascinates me to the core: although this time the characters really talk a lot (they are Americans after all), the essentials about their motifs are expressed by Refn with a hint, gesture, facial expression. He simply remained Nordic, even in a field that is supremely "Hollywood". While it's a film with a completely accessible story, Refn made it into an uncontracted author's manifesto and a festival of subversive image-sound connectivity. I just love that Danish boy! Maybe he should make a Bond film. (07/09/2011)

A stunning minimalist film, a unique experience for lovers of a blend of bearable art-modernism and uncompromising realistic rawness. I would devour everything about the main character, the music perfectly underscores it, and the action is uncompromising. Overall, a very meticulously styled film, whose creators have a knack for feeling and aesthetics and know exactly what and how to do it. (28/10/2011)