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The arty Danish fast-cars-and-crime thriller, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, should be promotable to good box office results from both discerning and popcorn audiences come September.

CANNES -- A spasmodically violent, creatively cast and off-center fast-cars-and-crime drama, Drive belongs to a rarified genre subset of stripped down, semi-arty and quasi-existentialist action films that includes Point Blank, Bullitt and The Driver. With Ryan Gosling ably incarnating a pent-up man of few words who goes to great lengths to make one positive gesture in a rotten world, Danish wunderkind Nicolas Winding Refn has fashioned an atmospheric and engaging glorified potboiler that nonetheless seems powered by a half-empty creative tank. Not the sort of film normally seen in the competition at Cannes, this moody and bloody entry should be promotable to good box office results from both discerning and popcorn audiences come September.