Rated R

There’s a great line in “Drive” wherein Albert Brooks, playing a washed-up movie producer who’s fallen into some questionably criminal company, mentions the films he used to make back in the day. “One critic called them ‘European.’” he says. “I thought they were shit.”

It’s a great comment on the movie he’s currently in, which is bound to confound the average American motorhead hoping for another installment in the “Faster” and “Drive Angry” legacy. Written by Hossein Amini, an Iranian born screenwriter whose successes lie mostly with British literary dramas, and directed by Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn, this is decidedly not like those other car films.

“Languid” is not a word typically associated with a fuel-injected crime thriller, but “Drive” is exactly that. Refn’s camera simply caresses the neon Los Angeles landscape, drifting meditatively to a gentle, sighing, ’80s-infused synth score, evoking feelings more along the lines of “Blade Runner” than “Gone in 60 Seconds.” Far more art than action, Refn’s direction shows no fear of silence, and like the best noir narratives, allows the shadows to tell the story, isolation to define the romance and, in properly European fashion, for mysteries to be answered by more questions.

The cast, too, plays gloriously against type. Brooks, a professional funnyman, is also apparently a professional actor. Here, the man is all business as a growling ex-mogul desperately willing to try just about anything to regain some level of his past glory. One can’t help wondering when it was that he became Gene Hackman.

Hollywood pretty boy Ryan Gosling, best known for his notably mushy turn in “The Notebook,” doesn’t appear to have a sharp edge on him, and would seem an odd choice to play a guy who makes his living by crashing stunt cars in the movies by day and running getaway for petty thieves by night. But he brings a stoic, positively Zen quietude to his role as the unnamed driver, saying no more than he has to, if that.

Whatever it is that haunts Gosling’s unnamed character is never explored, and that’s just as well. In the opening scene, he eludes police not just with speed but with a judicious cunning. His intelligence and capacity for navigating tense situations are clearly defined. Everything else we need to know about him comes through in his steely, thousand-yard stare.

The only thing that appears to melt the driver’s ice is the mother who lives in the neighboring apartment, working to raise her son as her husband passes time in jail for some unexplained past malfeasance. Any other director would probably have tried to wedge a Megan Fox or an Olivia Wilde into this role, but Refn eschews common hotness for a pure, luminous vulnerability with the impish Carey Mulligan. She exudes a sober, if slightly defeated, resignation, and more, a profound loneliness that demands some answer.

As we, through the driver’s eyes, see his neighbor struggling through the everyday troubles of her life, his desire for the relief of simple human connection is deeply felt. It’s an affair of rare domesticity; she needs a hand, he needs a friend. Their relationship is carefully, empathetically drawn, and an extraordinary thing in modern storytelling.

When her husband surfaces from prison, in debt to some very unsavory parties, there’s only the slightest hint of masculine rivalry. Recognizing the threat these sharks pose to his new friend and her boy, their neighbor simply offers his services to help out the family—in this case, by taking the wheel for the husband’s “one last job” to pay off his bosses. And, naturally, that’s when everything goes straight to hell.

Refn’s ability to allow things to unravel in the most natural of ways is a wonder to behold. Some may be put off by his long, lingering close-ups of the characters’ impenetrable expressions, but maybe only because it forces one’s own mind to fill in the spaces. These long hushes serve to very effectively frame the horrors of brutality that eventually, and gruesomely, erupt as the situation goes inevitably haywire.

There’s one sublime moment, among many, of pure, slow, gauzy cinematic romance, punctuated by a man’s head being ruthlessly, matter-of-factly Pan’s Labyrinthed to a pulp. The shock is perfectly earned, and far more effective for the silence that surrounds it. It’s a terrible moment, but great filmmaking.

Refn goes deep, seemingly hell bent on avoiding every staple that would keep us on the surface of this story. What sets this movie apart may in fact be all the things it doesn’t do. It’s not in the least concerned with speed or metal or sex or money or screeching rubber. This one, against all expectations, is all about human motivation. The thing it does best is to remind us dopey, depthless Americans that “drive” is not a just verb. It’s also a noun.