'Drive' guy can't slam brakes on crime

In the fashion-conscious crime flick "Drive," Ryan Gosling wears tight jeans, leather gloves and a silk jacket -- embroidered with a giant scorpion, yet -- while zooming through Los Angeles accompanied by a synth-rock soundtrack somewhere between Tangerine Dream and Wang Chung.

What decade is it again?

As far as Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn is concerned, it's the 1980s, a time of dark shades, neon lights and gleaming sedans. "Drive," which earned Refn the best director prize at Cannes, is a slick, stylish neo-noir that fuses Reagan-era classics like William Friedkin's grisly "To Live and Die in L.A." (1985), David Lynch's surreal "Blue Velvet" (1986) and Michael Mann's cool, moody "Thief" (1981). Even the credits are in hot-pink handwriting.

If that sounds like style over substance, well, it unabashedly is. All you need to know about the plot (adapted from James Sallis' novel) is that Gosling plays the enigmatic, unnamed Driver, a getaway man who avoids attachments until he meets Irene (Carey Mulligan, all moist eyes and shy smiles) and her little boy (Kaden Leos). When Irene's husband, Standard Gabriel (Oscar Isaac), emerges from prison, he's forced into one last job, which Driver reluctantly joins.

That job goes south, of course, and also slam-shifts the movie into high-revving violence. Suddenly, Gosling becomes a dripping-red ball of rage, stabbing, hammering and stomping his way through victims. The gore can be shocking, but the horror-film sound effects -- the blades go shiing!, the blood goes blorp! -- imply that it's also a bit of a giggle.

The fine cast includes Bryan Cranston as a hard-luck mechanic, Christina Hendricks as a useless heist partner and Ron Perlman as a frustrated gangster, although Albert Brooks, daringly cast as a murderous crime boss, doesn't quite muster enough menace.

Overall, "Drive" is too knowing, too self-conscious to live up to the films that inspired it, but it's certainly a wild ride.

PLOT A professional getaway driver chooses the wrong job. RATING R (violence, gore, language)

CAST Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Albert Brooks

LENGTH 1:40

PLAYING AT Area theaters

BOTTOM LINE This slick, stylish fusion of 1980s noirs can feel overly clever but still delivers a satisfying thrill ride.

Back story: Look who's not talking

When Ryan Gosling and director Nicolas Winding Refn would wrap 12 hours of shooting on "Drive," their new thriller about a man who cruises around Los Angeles, they'd do the last thing you'd expect: They'd get in a car and cruise around Los Angeles.

"We would just drive for hours, talking and listening to music," Gosling, who always took the wheel, recalled as he and Refn sipped tea recently at a Beverly Hills hotel. "And I would say, 'This is what we want to capture in the movie, this feeling of being in a trance in a car with pop music playing,' " he said.

At the end of their drives, the pair would usually end up at the 101 Coffee Shop, a Hollywood eatery a few blocks from its namesake freeway. Once there, they'd talk about -- what else? -- driving.

In the movie, though, Gosling's character can go without words for minutes and never utters more than a short sentence or two at a time -- an approach Gosling said he improvised at the start of production.

"After 'Blue Valentine' and all the press and all the talking for that movie and in that movie, I was tired of talking," the actor said, referring to his role in the 2010 romantic drama.

-- Los Angeles Times