Going into Drive, I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel about it. It seemed to be a very polarizing movie. Almost everyone I know who has seen it either loves it and thought it was robbed at the Oscars or found it slow and unwatchable. Now that I’ve seen it, I can say that while I don’t think it was robbed of an Oscar nomination, I definitely fall on the side of people who liked the movie.

I thought Drive was very well paced, so I don’t get people who found it too slow.

Ryan Gosling gives what appears to be another seemingly effortless performance as the unnamed driver in Drive. By effortless, please don’t think I’m calling him lazy. I’m not. I’m amazed by Ryan Gosling as an actor. He seems to fall into each character he plays so easily. It never seems like I’m watching Ryan Gosling play a character as much as it feels like watching Ryan Gosling now as a that person.

For a movie with not that many violent scenes, I was amazed at how violent the violence was on screen. When Ryan Gosling is stomping a hole in that guy’s face in the elevator, I recoiled the same way as when I saw the “eat the sidewalk” scene in American History X.

My only knock against Drive is that I didn’t get the point of the neon title logo and 80s-esque synth pop soundtrack. The movie takes place in the present day, right? Is it supposed to be evocative of 80s movies, or am I just reading too much into things?

Since seeing Drive, I’ve developed a habit of hanging my watch from my steering wheel and telling people they have five minutes to get back in my car before taking them on a high speed car ride. There’s no way this is going to end well…