You know how sometimes I see a film and I get all ranty and shouty about it (first person to mention Red Riding Hood leaves the room via the virtual window)?

Yeah. This isn’t one of those posts.

I flat-out, completely, hopelessly love Drive.

I love the sparse use of dialogue. I love the spiralling pace: incredibly slow at first, but gradually increasing until–like the nameless Driver–you’re hopelessly sucked in.

I love the Michael Mann-ish shots of LA, and I love the way Ryan Gosling is busy channelling vintage Steve McQueen for all he’s worth.

I love the quiet horror of *that* scene in the garage, which left me sitting on the sofa thinking, “That’s just… mean!” because I couldn’t think of anything else that seemed an appropriate response. (And, while we’re on the subject: the lift! The hammer! Oh, god, the hammer…)

More than anything, though, I love the Driver. Not, I should point out, because I have a particular thing for Ryan Gosling (although the Ryan Gosling-as-literary-agent account on Twitter makes me smile and desperately, desperately wish that such a thing was real) but because the development of the Driver is just superb.

For the first third of the film, he barely says more than two words together–and the first time he really does come out with a solid batch of dialogue, it’s surprising and shocking; gloriously wrong-footing. The infamous Scorpion jacket is as elegant a comment on heroism – working in its own right as a superhero analogy – as I’ve seen, and while it shouldn’t work, it does.

It’s an amazing film.

And using this song is just inspired…