Ryan Gosling Brings ‘Drive’ To Cannes [PHOTOS]

photocall for his film Drive at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. The film, which also stars Mad Men actress Christina Hendricks is in the running for this year’s Palme d’Or. The early reviews for the film are pretty good, but not excellent.

The actor delighted his “car-phobic” director by taking stunt-driving lessons for his role as a getaway driver in his new film. The Canadian actor teams up with Never Let Me Go star Carey Mulligan in Drive, which is about a Hollywood stuntman who moonlights as a driver-for-hire for the Los Angeles underworld.

Here is a sampling from a few of the reviews:

The Hollywood Reporter: So it’s a fun, if not exhilarating, ride, one sped along with the help of a wonderfully assembled cast. Gosling here makes a bid to enter the iconic ranks of tough, self-possessed American screen actors — Steve McQueen, Clint Eastwood, Lee Marvin — who express themselves through actions rather than words. Sometimes (mostly around Irene), his Driver smiles too much, but Gosling assumes just the right posture of untroubled certainty in the driving scenes and summons unsuspected reserves when called upon for very rough stuff later on.

The Guardian: Refn’s film is playing in the main competition at Cannes, where it is up against the likes of The Tree of Life, Le Havre and The Artist. It can’t win, won’t win and almost certainly shouldn’t win. It’s too self-consciously retro, too much a series of cool, blank surfaces as opposed to a rounded, textured drama. In any case, B-movies like this are rarely geared for victory. They’re the disruptive, disreputable interlopers at the party, pointed towards disaster and doomed to meet a bloody end. The most they can hope for is to go down in a blaze of glory. Drive does, with bells on.