Guy meets girl, guy saves girl, and everyone lives happily ever after. Sort of.
In this story, the guy drives souped-up cars rather than a white horse, the girl is a single mom with a husband in jail and, in the battle for a happy ending, there's a lot of blood spilled as good people get hurt and killed.
"We wanted to make a violent John Hughes movie," explains Gosling, "with a head smashing."
"Take that cotton candy and throw blood on it."
Gosling plays the protagonist - whose name isn't mentioned in the film and is called "Driver" in the credits - a mechanic and stunt driver who moonlights as a getaway man for a string of criminals.
He starts falling for the girl who lives across the hall in his apartment building, played by Casey Mulligan, and vows to protect her when her husband gets out of jail and gets back into trouble.
"I always wanted to play a superhero and all the good ones were taken," jokes Gosling, adding that he worked with director Nicolas Winding Refn to shape the character into someone that nobody knows: a mysterious, silent, no-nonsense type. Which is exactly the way the character wants it.
"He's a myth, he's a knight trying to save the princess from the dragon and the evil wizard," Gosling says.
"He's lost in the mythology of Hollywood, he's not a person anymore, he may have been at one point but he's not anymore."
The film is shockingly violent and bloody at points, which Refn attributes to his style as a "fetish filmmaker."
"I purely make films based on what I want to see, not always understanding it, but it's what I want to see," he says, adding that he dreams up images and builds a story around it.
Refn, who won best director at the Cannes Film Festival for "Drive," compared the subversiveness of his rough-around-the-edges fairy tale to a film he's long admired, "Pretty Woman."
"I always thought that film was such a great achievement of taking a story that had such a dark theme and twisted sexuality and yet was steered into a fairy tale 'Cinderella' catharsis - and nobody noticed it," he says.
"I remember thinking, 'That's the greatest trick I've ever seen,' it's like a magic trick of illusion, how can you take something that's so obviously one thing and yet transform it into something completely different.
"I've always thought of that movie, especially for 'Drive,' because I wanted to do something like that."
In addition to Gosling and Mulligan, the film features several other big-name actors including Bryan Cranston of "Breaking Bad," Christina Hendricks of "Mad Men" and Hollywood veteran Albert Brooks.
Cranston appreciated the European flair Refn brought to the picture and the way he allowed actors to collaborate on their lines.
"I met with Nicolas and he said, 'What do you want to do? Do whatever you want to do,'" says Cranston, who is the day-job boss and confidant to Gosling's character.
"He has the courage to be able to have many moments of silence and just looks, there doesn't need to be dialogue."
Brooks says he'd been dying to play a villain for years and was thrilled when he finally got a chance, thanks to Refn.
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