KCUR's Steve Walker shares his top movie picks of the week. Drive: Danish director Nicolas Winding Rfen's taut and violent thriller is directed with such blinding virtuosity, it reclaims the notion that film can be art.By Steve Walker
Kansas City, Mo. – Drive: Danish director Nicolas Winding Rfen's taut and violent thriller is directed with such blinding virtuosity, it reclaims the notion that film can be art. Ryan Gosling cunningly plays a stunt driver moonlighting as a getaway driver who's so blank and stony he doesn't even have a name. "The Kid," as he's referred to, has big dreams of adding yet another skill to his repertoire - stock car driver - and, to that end, sells his soul to a couple of Faustian thugs (Ron Perelman and Albert Brooks, both frighteningly good). Nothing Gosling's character gets involved with is simple, even a romantic interest in Irene (the sublime Carey Mulligan), the unassuming next-door neighbor whose husband is about to be released from prison. Betrayals upon betrayals make things very bloody very quickly and the studied, molasses-like pace of the film wrenches up the intensity. Add to that Newton Thomas Sigel's stunning cinematography and a hypnotic score peppered with faux-80s electro-pop (also slowed down and chilly) and you've got a movie that gets under your skin. - Steve Walker