Review of Drive (2011) by Eric H — 20 Dec 2018

From the beginning, it's clear Drive is not a standard-order action film. It takes its characters as seriously as its chases, shootouts, and fights. Neither aspect is short-changed, and the music and cinematography are used to establish and sustain tone.

This is a moody film, with moments of understated, dark humor and bleakness. Most importantly, it shows that movies can generate a testosterone-and-adrenaline cocktail without requiring viewers to undergo a frontal lobotomy to appreciate the result.

Perhaps Drive is an action movie for those who don't ordinarily like action movies. It's also an action movie for those who crave them like a drug. Employing unusual camera angles and a unique sense of style, director Nicolas Winding Refn takes us on a journey that gets us to feel something for the characters while still receiving an adrenaline rush when the speedometer races into the red zone.