I saw it might contain spoilers so I looked at the pictures and read the last two paragraphs. You instantly confirmed what I suspected:"But the way folks, especially those in L.A., were Tweeting...I went in expecting to see Martin Scorcese meets Sam Fuller with a twist of Jean-Luc Godard." Thanks. Glad I'm not alone. Now to go back and read it. P.S. I'll bet Refn actually pitched it that way -- “Pretty in Pink with a head smash”. P.P.S. How many movies are going to add head smashing now? "It's A Wonderful Life with a head smash."

Is Drive a modern, urban spaghetti western ?? People forget that Sergio Leone's movies were low budget affairs (Fistful of dollars cost $200k in 1964 dollars). With the new generation of cheap digital cameras, such as the Canon, it would be straightforward for cost sensitive film makers to make such films.

Is Drive a modern, spaghetti western? Yes and no. That's one of the things about the film: It jumps genres like three times. I don't mean it's a cross-genre like Action-Thriller, I mean it actually moves from this type of genre to that type of genre. As in Pretty in Pink. Then Head Smash. Again I like the movie and there's a lot to like in it. But I completely get why it did the business it did and a movie like Dolphin Tale, Contagion, The Help or Moneyball did the business they did. I'll get to that in a post in the next day or two.

My spaghetti western comment was intended to suggest that there's a market for these kinds of movies, which almost feels like a new genre., and that Drive is this new genre's Fistful. As of yesterday, Drive has grossed $27.2M on a budget of $15M, vs $39.9M/$50M for Moneyball. And imho, Drive is going to do well in DVD/PPV, etc... Not every movie has to be a home run. Drive is an indie (FilmDistrict distributed) that will make money, and did the box office the producers expected, but didn't break out the way I suspect they'd hoped. Not necessarily a bad thing, and I think this kind of movie, in particular, could be cheap to make.

I've worked on a few projects about people with Asperger's Syndrome and Gosling's performance as The Driver brought that immediately to mind. Very funny article, more so because she hits on some truths.

She hits on some truths but misses a big one when she talks about the incredible song "A Real Hero" and wonders if the singer dated robots in the past. The song is about Sully Sullenberger, the pilot who landed in the Hudson River. The big clue is that he saved "all one hundred fifty-five", which is the number of people who survived because of Sullenberger's landing. The word "pilot" is somewhere in the song, too, and there's a bit about his nerves being colder than the surrounding water. When you add it all up, it has to be Sullenberger she's singing about, which makes the song less right for Drive -- which I adored -- but cooler in its own right. In a world where so many of our heros are fiction, it's great that someone took the time to write a song about a real life -- ie a real human being -- hero.

Again I'm not bagging on Drive. It's a success on many levels not the least of which is it found an audience and will make money. There was just a lot of hype about the movie in the weeks leading up to its release and its opening weekend that led some people, whose comments I was reading on Twitter and other sources online, to expect much bigger B.O. numbers. And I think there are specific reasons why that's the case. I hope filmmakers keep taking chances and making original movies. That's great. And your point is spot-on: With digital filmmaking nowadays, it's possible to do things on the cheap and make them come out great.

I love artists. They make life fun. I want a print of the getaway chimp. Here's a writer having fun writing as comic sans font. Refn makes intense moments, the singular vision type movies auteurs have the best success at creating. I don't think a bit more heart and happy would hurt his work at all. Just a thread or two, woven into story and characters, to keep it attached to audience. Folks laughing at the bloody scorpion jacket, that's suspended disbelief crashing to the ground.

Atlanta - I agree about suspended disbelief crashing to the ground. I really enjoyed the style and the music but felt that the entire experience was some sort of ironic inside joke. I couldn't figure out if the scene btw Brooks and Perlman (the one about the mafia) was bad dialogue on purpose or not. It was very bizarre to me. I think most people in the theatre were disappointed in the film. The ones that liked it reminded me of the ones that really liked American Psycho.