2. The Driver - Drive
One of the most pleasant film surprises of the past decade was Nicolas Winding Refn's 2011 film Drive, which set the festival circuit ablaze and then brought audiences to their knees when it hit cinemas. Few people were aware the furore this film brought upon release, but when it actually dropped, it took the cinema world by storm, and rightly so. It is ultra-violent art house at its finest, an exploitation flick wrapped in the comforting bodice of an indie romance, and at the center is Ryan Gosling. Gosling plays the mysterious character who is credited only as "The Driver", a character so utterly compelled and defined by his actions, that her gives up his name in celebration of what he does. The character is quiet, keeps to himself, and is rarely anything but serious, and despite the lack of dialogue given to him, it is a far from easy performance for Gosling. Used to building characters on occasionally verbose charm - see Crazy, Stupid, Love - and that disarming charisma, Gosling was stripped here of those artifices and given the most meagre of character models to bring "The Driver" to life. But with artful subtlety, the actor rose to the occasion sublimely, offering one of the defining modern action movie roles - part Steve McQueen, all cool - with an explosive undercurrent, and importantly, the kind of contradictory heart that made actors like McQueen and John Wayne so powerfully entertaining in similar, albeit antiquated roles.