'Drive,' don't walk to see this

Samurai don’t wear robes or carry swords anymore, but they still exist. They wear driving gloves and carry hammers to nail bullets into thugs’ foreheads.  
“Drive”’s nameless antihero possesses the same focus, patience and loyalty of his feudal Japanese ancestors. Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn shares the same pacing and cinematic flourish as his Asian, French and Italian counterparts.
Ryan Gosling is brilliant as the intensely cool and collected stunt driver on the run from mobsters (Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman). His struggle is to break out of his role as an inhuman, emotionless criminal who has nothing but skill behind the wheel.
When he meets Irene (Carey Mulligan) early in the film, he comes close to developing a personality.
But then the film revs from stark tension to ultraviolence faster than you can shift gears from fourth to fifth.  
“Drive” is steeped in enough bloody elegance, cinematic minimalism and 1980s electronica to be memorable as one of the strongest and most visceral films of 2011.