Gorgeous and Gruesome Coexist

Location Info

Map

Roxie Theater

3117 16th St. (at Valencia)
San Francisco, CA 94103

Category: Performing Arts Venues

Region: Mission/ Bernal Heights

Photos

2 user reviews	Write A Review
Save to foursquare	0

Related Content

• Exploding Pig Farms, Trader Joe's Veg Eats, and Vegan Ryan Gosling!
  February 10, 2012
• "The Ides of March": George Clooney for President!
  October 5, 2011
• An Open Letter To Ryan Gosling (Because We Love His Band)
  October 28, 2011
• Year in Film: "Margaret" Is the Best Forgotten Cursed Film of 2011
  December 28, 2011
• "Crazy Stupid Love": Sweet but Less-Than-Groundbreaking Romcom
  July 27, 2011

More About

• Ryan Gosling
• Drive (Movie)
• Nicolas Winding Refn
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media
• Action and Adventure Movies

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Events Newsletter: What's happening in town? From underground club nights to the biggest outdoor festivals, our top picks for the week's best events will always keep you in on the action.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

As stripped down and propulsive as its robotic title, Drive is the most "American" movie yet by Danish genre director Nicolas Winding Refn. The film is a sleek, tense piece of work that, as a vehicle for Ryan Gosling, has a kind of daredevil control, swerving the actor dangerously close to and abruptly away from self-parody. The plot could nearly be inscribed on the head of a pin: A chivalrous loner—Gosling's Hollywood stunt driver/wheelman—participates in an armed robbery to help out the woman he loves; the deal turns out to be a setup, and the body count explodes. Drive is nominally set in the present day, but the 40-year-old director elects to emphasize the retro—synthesizing Miami Vice's languid dissolves and neon-limned dive bars, Blade Runner's nocturnal skylines and Top Gun's MTV-friendly lyrical montage interludes. Refn's most obvious break with the airbrushed '80s and clearest link to his own early films is the ultraviolent, even gruesome, splatter that comes once Gosling's near-catatonic driver agrees to the heist. It's one of Drive's jokes that, over the course of the movie, Gosling's spiffy silver jacket will be increasingly bloodstained. The Gosling character is not only a master of high-speed bumper cars but, when riled, also a near-lunatic killer who, as up close and personal as the protagonist of Refn's Bronson, uses a hammer, some steel-tipped footwear and his bare hands to take care of business.
Jan. 13-19; Jan. 27-Feb. 4; Wed., Feb. 8, 2012