the minimal dialogue does lead to a few too many fussy/busy "actorly" moments. But they have collaborated on a car picture that unnerves us with its idling quiet, and then pins our ears back when they stomp the accelerator
it's a visually and aurally edgy Euro-influenced American genre movie about the coolness of noir-influenced American genre movies about the coolness of driving - especially in L.A.
it shows that movies can generate a testosterone-and-adrenaline cocktail without requiring viewers to undergo a frontal lobotomy to appreciate the result
is a sleek, tense piece of work that, as a vehicle for Ryan Gosling, has a kind of daredevil control, swerving dangerously close to and abruptly away from self-parody