'Drive' maintains interest, but not speed.

Release Date: September 16th, 2011

Cast: Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, Ron Perlman

Director: Nicolas Winding Refn

Rated: R       Run Time: 1 Hr. 40 Min.

Drive is a cool ride that cruises along being more crime drama than high octane driving experience, which is completely unexpected.

With the title, one would think that the film would shift into high gear, and bring the action expected from something that might come out of the Fast and the Furious franchise.

This is not the case with Drive.

This film is a subtle character study that just happens to have a few fast cars and some tight, if not all too short car chases. Ryan Gosling plays Driver, a stuntman that is moonlighting as a wheel man for criminals at night.

All things are going well for Driver, until he starts to care for his neighbor (Carry Mulligan) and her son Benicio (Kaden Leos).

The problem is that she is not divorced from her ex-con husband, and when he is released from prison, he brings a criminal element into mother and son's lives.

To protect the woman and child he's become attached to, Driver  will have to help the ex-con husband settle some debts, but not even the best laid plans go right every time.

Gosling is in great form in Drive, portraying a McQueen kind of cool and a white hot mean streak when you get him angry. Not much is learned about his character, and he doesn't say a lot, but it's not a problem.

His character is fascinating being this mysterious and is too cool to have the fact that we learn little about him take away from the performance.

What does take away from the performance, if just a little, is the amount of silence his character and others are involved in.

There is actually a lot of silence in this film, and that is both a good and bad thing. There are areas in Drive that benefit from the silent tension before all hell breaks loose.

The bad side of the silence in this film comes out of Mulligan and Gosling on the screen at the same time. There is a lot to be said in silence, but if that silence goes on to long than that moment just feels awkward, and sometimes it reaches that point of awkwardness in this film.

Drive stalls a couple of times throughout the film due to this use of silence, but most of the time it is a cool picture that cruises at its own pace. The acting is top notch all around, but Drive would have benefitted from maybe kicking it into a higher gear in terms of action.

Grade: C+

Have a look at the trailer: