Drive Reviews

What Drive is trying to do is very clear, but clear intent doesn't forgive a film that's mostly flat.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

Before long, and then with grinding relish, "Drive" becomes one garishly sadistic set piece after another.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

Winner of the Best Director prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival, "Drive" is a stylish film that doesn't know what it wants to be. Is it a thriller? A romance? A heist film? All of the above? To be honest, I really don't know

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5

While you could lean back and nod along to Refn's posturing, the film plays more like an exercise in turn-of-the-Eighties nostalgia, a movie-length strong-silent swagger inspired by the art on a VHS box.

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A movie with the title Drive should not be left in 'park.'

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

Ultra-violent, ultra-tedious, bargain-basement rip-off of the classic 1978 Walter Hill film The Driver.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5

It is the autumn's first golden boy after a summer of lightweight superhero fare, but is truly no richer in thought or spirit than the shallowest comic-book flick.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

An artsy, self-conscious, existentialist stillness reigns - or, more accurately, tedium. Hyper-stylish, it idles in, then stalls out.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10

"Drive" is somber, slick and earnest, and also a prisoner of its own emptiness, substituting moods for emotions and borrowed style for real audacity.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5

Though it easily surpasses most American action flicks, it suffers from the old commercial imperative of making the protagonist a nice guy, something Refn has seldom bothered with in Europe.

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For me, Drive is all attitude, punctuated by unpleasant bursts of violence. If that's what passes for cutting-edge filmmaking, or storytelling, we're in trouble.

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In grabbing our attention, [Refn] diverts it from what matters. The horror lingers and seeps; the feelings are sponged away.

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It's probably not the film that the trailer would lead you to believe that it is. I think it tries to be more than that and I don't think it makes it.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5

Refn ... is an avid fan of American thrillers and is clearly familiar with most of its clichés. Every one is displayed, in one sequence or another, during the film.

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Why would Gosling, a fascinatingly cerebral actor, take a role so far inside his comfort zone? Does he long to strike action-icon poses -- to be the new Nic Cage?

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It's a film in love with both traditional noir mythology and ultra-modern violence, a combination that is not ideal.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

Refn has made a movie where the main characters barely speak and take themselves so seriously, that a little levity, at times, might have helped.

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Hands down the coolest film of 2011, Drive is a stylised genre film where the genre is constantly changing.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

Something under the hood of Drive captured my heart; director Nicolas Winding Refn has admirably crafted a fine piece of retro-noir cinema.

Full Review | Original Score: A+

Nicolas Winding Refn's atmosperic direction, Gosling's sheer presence and a soundtrack that's perfection make Drive a fantastic film.

Full Review | Original Score: 10/10

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