Long before being the extreme “Fall Guy” earlier this year, Ryan Gosling was a brooding stuntman in Danish film director Nicolas Winding Refn’s 2011 action drama that now debuts to American audiences in the 4K disc format and celebrated in a limited SteelBook edition. Mr. Gosling plays a professional stuntman simply known as “The Driver” who occasionally moonlights as a getaway driver for heists.
After meeting neighbor Irene Gabriel (Carey Mulligan) and her son Benicio (Kaden Leos), he begins a flirty relationship with her until her husband, Standard (Oscar Isaac), gets released from prison. Standard quickly gets beaten up and forced by a mob boss to rob a pawnshop of $1 million as payback for his protection in prison. The Driver agrees to help him out, but the job goes horribly wrong, and the stuntman gets pulled into a deadly double cross that also threatens his life and his new friends as he tries to return the money.
The film offers plenty of nail munching and some heart pounding as The Driver, through whatever gruesomely violent means necessary, tries to extricate himself from the dilemma. Mr. Gosling consumes the role of a daring, calculated and methodical human with a brutal psychotic streak.
His performance is richly supplemented by Brian Cranston as his handler and auto shop owner Shannon, and Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman as a team of nasty mobsters. And, equally impressive as the cast and narrative, the first 10 minutes of the film offer a clinic on shoot.