Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive--a pulp fairytale about a driver struggling to protect an optionless family--has deep cinematic roots that run through the canon of existential noir from the '60s onwards, borrowing the central characterization of Walter Hill's The Driver, the professional code of Jean-Pierre Melville's The Samurai and the palette and pace of Michael Mann's Heat. Ryan Gosling has formidable presence as the un-named hero: a classic celluloid stranger whose eyes give away everything his controlled dialogue tries to conceal. He makes fair money as an in-demand getaway driver with a legit career in stunt-driving and racing ahead of him. But when a protective relationship is struck with a coping mother (Carey Mulligan) and her young son (Kaden Leos) he breaks his own rules to help her backslider husband with one last heist. Sure enough, nothing goes according to plan--and the driver must lay down a trail of retribution, attitude and scorched rubber to shake off a brutal entanglement with the mob. Gosling's depiction of heroic cool is flawless, as are supporting performances from Mad Men's Christina Hendricks as a trashy moll, Albert Brooks as a dangerous investor and Ron Perlman as the demonic gangster pulling the narrative strings. The cinematography of Newton Thomas Sigel (The Usual Suspects) also gives Los Angeles a hip starring role: the shots of Gosling racing his 1973 Chevrolet Malibu along LA's concrete riverbed--or just rolling it around the sodium-tinted backstreets--make franchise concepts like The Fast and The Furious look suspiciously like nerd territory. --Leo Batchelor