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Restraint is not director Nicolas Winding Refn’s strong suit. With a body of work that includes the explosive excesses of Bronson, the ultra-stylized fluorescent gore of The Neon Demon and the all-out savagery of Only God Forgives. He seems a director who, for better and worse, can't control himself. However, restraint is precisely what makes his 2011 thriller Drive a classic that is likely to be revered for generations to come.

Drive is a violent film about a stunt/getaway driver, an iconic role from Ryan Gosling, who gets tangled up in some deal gone awry involving a few different strands of the mafia. His involvement is triggered, unusually enough, by his relationship with a mother and her son who live next door to him. The boy's father is fresh out of jail and, though he has good intentions, his debts and the manipulation of the mob mean he's obliged to pull off a final job, something which our hero, whose name is billed as Driver, agrees to help him with out of affection for the mother and the son. Needless to say, things go very wrong. Refn grips the reins of the film with such a fierce sense of control, letting the tension he creates over the first half of the film explode at precisely the moment he wants. As I say, it’s violent, very violent in some instances. But the violence is linked intrinsically to character, to plot and even to the visual subtext of the film.

Refn feels similarly passionate about exercising restraint over the real heart of the film: the romance between Driver and his neighbour, Irene, played with delicacy by Carey Mulligan. Their chemistry is unbelievably strong to the point where they hardly say a word to one another. Refn lets whole sequences remain entirely tacit, letting Mulligan and Gosling talk to one another through minute gestures and shifts of gaze. Across the film the stakes of their relationship increase and the Driver's actions reflect the burning love he has for Irene and her son, but Refn still won’t budge. Finally, in a hyper-stylized sequence in an elevator, they kiss for a few seconds. It’s immensely powerful and such a small physical expression of love becomes monumental in significance.

Framed by an exhilarating plot, a timeless soundtrack and a glistening visual texture, the tragic love story at the heart of Drive is elevated to the dizzy heights of In The Mood For Love and The Great Gatsby. A stunning film that is as purely thrilling as it is poetic and entrancing.

EveryFilmIWatch is multi-channel film review project run by Sebastian Cox, ScriptUp co-founder. Further reviews can be found on Instagram.