Nicolas Winding Refn builds tension from silence, saturated colour and sudden violence. We recommend Drive most warmly, with a reservation that extends beyond it: he sometimes gives the images more attention than the people.
Fi1m perspective
In Drive (2011), Ryan Gosling barely speaks, and Nicolas Winding Refn lets his stillness hold our attention. The getaway driver's skill makes him reassuring company before we have much reason to trust him. Refn understands the appeal of someone who appears to know exactly what he is doing. He also makes that appeal unsettling. We recommend the film because it keeps us watching this quiet man without letting his competence stand as proof of his goodness.
Pusher (1996) began somewhere rougher, with a raw, documentary-influenced approach to crime. Refn developed it into a trilogy that ran to 2005. Bronson (2008) marked a move towards more stylised portraiture, before Drive brought him into Hollywood. The isolated, potentially violent outsider is a recurring interest. His saturated colours and spare compositions ask us to spend time looking at people who may have little to say.
In Drive, composer Cliff Martinez gives the pauses a warmth that Gosling often withholds. The synthesiser score belongs with the retro imagery, but also supplies tenderness that the central performance keeps to itself. We were jolted by the violence because it arrives abruptly, with graphic detail that Refn does not soften. The film's handsome appearance makes those moments harder to enjoy without reservation. Refn gives us time to settle into the music and the stillness before interrupting them.
The romance is less secure: the screenplay does not give it enough, and Martinez cannot supply every missing feeling. That is our reservation about Refn more broadly, when atmosphere takes the place of character development. Only God Forgives (2013) continued his interest in stylised violence, while The Neon Demon (2016) moved into fashion-world horror. The slow rhythms and graphic violence of his work can be alienating, and we would not recommend him simply on the promise of striking images. Start with Drive, but take the warning about its violence seriously.
Biography
Nicolas Winding Refn is a Danish film director, screenwriter and producer. Born in Copenhagen on 29 September 1970, he attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York but was expelled before returning to Denmark. He made his feature debut with the crime film Pusher (1996), which he followed with Bleeder (1999) and the Pusher sequels in 2004 and 2005.
Refn directed Bronson (2008), Valhalla Rising (2009), Drive (2011), Only God Forgives (2013) and The Neon Demon (2016). Drive won him the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Director. In 2008 he co-founded the production company Space Rocket Nation. He later directed the series Too Old to Die Young (2019) and Copenhagen Cowboy (2022).
His most recent feature, Her Private Hell (2026), on which he served as director, screenwriter, story writer and producer, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.
