Nicolas Winding Refn is a kind of artist filmmaker. He is not making expensive films and he is not going for enormous box office. His films tend to be rather strange. Rather slow. Rather unsettling with ideas. He likes a buildup before a very gruesome scene. He equates this kind of tension to sex. Saying that the best part is the buildup. He is very horny. His films tend to have sexually questionable characters. A lot of perverts. A lot of killers. Drive is not an exception.
If you are up for some brain-fuck go and suck Nicolas Winding Refn's cock with me.
In a nutshell, the movie feels like a mash between Adrian Lyne's Flashdance, Damien Chazelle's Babylon, Ti West's MaXXXine and Lars Von Trier's Nymphomaniac, well stirred and served in a colorful presentation straight from Nicolas Winding Refn.
While on the other hand European movies are more open about sexuality. Directors from Europe like Danish filmmakers Lars Von Trier and Nicolas Winding Refn, French Luc Besson, Maïmouna Doucouré and Gaspar Noé, Italian Luca Guadagnino and many others are notorious for near pornographic ( if not entirely pornographic ) depictions of sex or explorations of sexual taboos in films like Nymphomaniac, The Neon Demon, Léon: The Professional, Cuties, Love and Call Me By Your Name to name a few.
The best example of what I'm talking about is a Nickolas Winding Refn's movie "Only God Forgives" which could be followed by looking at what you see in the frame, but that will leave a lot of questions. And a lot of it is very silly unless you can figure out a deeper meaning behind all of it.
A lot of people say about Vampire's Kiss that if not for Nicolas Cage, it would not have worked. I'm of an opinion that the only person that could change Nick in the movie, would be Jim Carrey. If you like movies where Jim Carrey goes bananas and you want to see a very similar level of bananas but from a different actor, watch Vampire's Kiss. Nick acted his ass off in this film.
Today I saw a movie called "Matchstick Men" made with $62 million which grossed only $65 million, but in my opinion should have made more. I mean we have a director of Alien and Gladiator - Ridley Scott. The lead actor is the amazingly over the top - Nicolas Cage. And a wonderful script by Ted Griffin who wrote Ocean's Eleven. And like Oceans Eleven it's a comedy about con artists.