We made a little overview of reviews of “Drive” in this post. It’s well received; it currently has a 93% rating at Rotten Tomatoes.

Ryan Gosling is a charismatic actor, as Steve McQueen was. He embodies presence and sincerity. Ever since his chilling young Jewish neo-Nazi in “The Believer” (2001), he has shown a gift for finding arresting, powerful characters. An actor who can fall in love with a love doll and make us believe it, as he did in “Lars and the Real Girl” (2007), can achieve just about anything. “Drive” looks like one kind of movie in the ads, and it is that kind of movie. It is also a rebuke to most of the movies it looks like. Grade: 3,5/ » Full review

Gosling, for his part, seems to mature as an actor minute by minute as the film plays out. Driver is a dangerous sort of man, blustery cold with unpredictable moments of boil, and Gosling plays it all like a Stradivarius, which is to say he uses the very capable tool he’s been given in a masterful manner. Grade: A » Full review

Ryan Gosling, one of our best young actors, takes it relatively easy after the dramatic heavy lifting of “Blue Valentine” by playing a relative cipher of a Hollywood stunt driver — known only as “Driver” — who moonlights as a robbery wheelman in Los Angeles. Grade: 3/4 » Full review

That he is such a cipher might seem frustrating, but Gosling’s masculine, minimalist approach makes him mysteriously compelling. Yes, there’s the fact that he’s gorgeous. But he also does so much with just a subtle glance, by just holding a moment a beat or two longer than you might expect. He’s defined not so much by who he is, but rather by what he does — how he responds in an increasingly dangerous series of confrontations. » Full review

As a getaway driver known only as Driver, Gosling obviously harks back to similar protagonists played by Ryan O’Neal, Lee Marvin, Robert De Niro and especially Steve McQueen. » Full review

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 18th, 2011 at 4:39 pm and is filed under Drive, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.