Ryan Gosling is the archetypal Man with No Name, an anonymous character who crashes cars in Hollywood movies by day, helps out at a garage owned by his friend Shannon (Bryan Cranston), and earns extra money as a getaway driver by night. Calm and detached, everything the driver does is carefully planned and economical; his getaway driving is carried out with split-second accuracy, he lives alone in an austere LA apartment, and seldom says two words when none will do. It’s a familiar scenario, but Refn constantly goes against the generic thriller grain. Abrupt, blunderbuss shots of violence are contrasted with long stretches of portentous silence – the net result, of course, being that the violent bits become all the more shocking. One shotgun attack in particular resulted in an audible gasp from certain members of the audience. And then there’s the fabulous cast. Ryan Gosling is quite possibly one of the most unlikely tough guys in movie history, and yet, through a mixture of superb direction and a sheer force of artistic will, he’s absolutely perfect. He brings a curious, skinny-hipped sense of menace to the role, and while he lacks the imposing silhouette of Jason Statham or Dwayne Johnson, when he lets forth his righteous fury in certain scenes, he’ll utterly convince you of his capacity for violence. This isn’t to say that Drive is at all naturalistic. It’s full of Georgio Moroder-style pop straight out of Scarface, surreal lighting, and a preoccupation with fussy wallpaper that recalls Park Chan-wook’s classic revenge flick, Oldboy. Refn introduces all sorts of quirks and conceits to Gosling’s character, which when written down seem unbelievably naff, but when seen in motion are unfeasibly cool; just look at that silken jacket, with its vast scorpion stitched on the back. It’s the sort of thing Stallone or Van Damme would have draped over their shoulders in their Reagan-era prime. The addition of an ever-present toothpick to the corner of Gosling’s mouth is something else that I never thought I’d see again in an action thriller – and yet there it is, and somehow, it works. Gosling, meanwhile, has the acting chops to cruise through Refn’s scenes of romance, while also pulling off some quite spectacular moments of bloodletting. This isn’t to say that Drive’s violence is gratuitous, however. Ever the dramatist, Refn pulls his camera back when you’re expecting the film to fall into a familiar action thriller groove, yet zooms the lens back in when you’re least expecting it. The result is a rare thing: a movie that satisfies dramatically, while maintaining the suspense of a purebred thriller. It’s worth mentioning, though, that while Drive falls easily into the revenge thriller genre – if you were to give the synopsis a cursory glance over, at least – the actual revenge component is the least interesting aspect of the film. Ron Perlman and Albert Brooks are the villains of the piece, and deliver strong performances, yet their characters are barely sketched in. One major scene Perlman and Brooks share is so ridiculously expository that it clashes with the rest of the film’s measured atmosphere. It’s one misstep in an otherwise exemplary movie. Drive, through a mixture of expert casting, passion and a cool eye for what is bad and what is brilliant about the iconography of mainstream action movies, manages to do something quite rare: it fulfils almost all its duties as a genre film, delivering the tensions, confrontations and violent resolutions that a larger audience might expect, while also serving as an unusual and arrestingly individual piece of filmmaking. Follow Den Of Geek on Twitter right here. And be our Facebook chum here.