Review of Drive (2011) by Dusty T — 31 Dec 2013

Before you ask, this is not my first Refn movie. In that way, I can know that:

- He still likes to dress his crooks with light grey pants and have some of them bald, like if they were still living in Denmark.

- He still uses an awesome techno soundtrack (with some pop touches that I can forgive) to open his films and to close them. The underground nudist dive bars / seedy joints cannot be omitted, of course.

- He has perfected his visual style all the way from Pusher (1996) until Bronson (2008), including the immaculate camera placement and the golden lightning he uses for illuminating the darkest corners. The camera is a silent stalker, intimidating and seductive at the same time. This turned out to be hist most accessible feature.

Winner of a Best Director award and nominated for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, this is not a Hollywood movie. It is a film made in Hollywood by a director that has not resigned to his trademarks and plot-pacing features so that he could get financially greedy. It is a bomb of coolness and style that strikes the senses and assaults your expectations. This is the territory to which Cronenberg attempted twice to return to, placing Viggo Mortensen in more or less convincing roles. Not in this case. Here, violence becomes a protagonist and suspense becomes art.

I love Ron Perlman.

97/100.