Review - Drive

Ryan Gosling is currently the Hollywood go-to guy for a great performance. With recent stints in Ides Of March and Crazy, Stupid Love he shows versatility in a wide range of roles and yet again he's at it in thriller Drive.


With Drive what you see is what you get. Gosling plays a driver (with no name), a man who at night runs the driving errands for criminals who have hired him and by day he is a stuntman for movies. This is about as much as we get to know about our main character and this suits the film perfectly.


From a beautiful opening playing similarly to Taxi Driver we are shown the area in which our driver is situated and then we are witness to his skills behind the wheel, with a police chase showcasing that he is a man who clearly needs no back story, with pulsating driving skills to put us in awe rather than question his background.


Our driver then finds himself embroiled further into trouble than he could ever have imagined following a botched robbery. The girl next door (Carey Mulligan) has taken a shine to our driver but when her husband is released from prison he enlists Gosling's help for 'one last job' and you guessed it, that goes haywire and he ends up dead. This in turn leaves our driver in a world of trouble and soon the sparks fly. Can he protect himself and the woman he has fallen for or will all be lost?


Enthralling, pulsating, immense, beautiful; these are all words which can be used to describe Drive. It's rare that for a film to come along with a character with such little introduction and succeed in doing so but this film certainly achieves that. Gosling, despite uttering few words throughout the whole duration simply commands proceedings and is aided along the way with some memorable performances from the likes of Bryan Cranston, Ron Perlman and Albert Brooks. 


Shot with such exquisiteness we are made fully aware of the stunning surroundings we find ourselves immersed into and couple this with the year's best soundtrack and Drive is all you have ever wanted from a film. If there's one film to see all year this is it, stunning stuff. 


Filme rating: 5 F's out of 5