What do you get when a small-time felon falls foul of a couple of ruthless Mob bosses? Ordinarily you would get screeching tyres, lots of flashy stunt driving, a pumping rock-music score and wisecracks by the dozen.

The Fast and Furious series, with Vin Diesel and Paul Walker, exemplifies that genre, but Drive is by no means a cheap re-run of that Hollywood template. It plays out on the mean streets of Los Angeles, in Hollywood, the perfect place to pretend to be someone else. It's part of the city's culture and, in this film, the audience never learns the central character's name.

He is just "the Driver", played by Ryan Gosling, a shadowy man who sometimes works as a car mechanic at a dodgy chop-shop. At other times, he is hired to be a stunt-driver for action movies. But his real skill is as a getaway driver for robberies, a job that provides big money.

These heist sequences are not presented as the usual glitzy thrill-ride. It is tough, gruelling work, and the film starts with "the Driver" taking two thieves to the place they mean to rob.

The long opening sequence runs for about eight to 10 minutes, with hardly a word spoken. It is so swift and so perfectly edited that it takes you to the edge of your seat, but leaves you without a clue as to where this story is headed.

We never learn who those thieves were, or what they stole. They are just a small part in the enigmatic world of "the Driver", and that is what sets this film apart.

The dialogue is minimal and director Nicolas Winding Refn imposes a swift, minimalist editing style and a tautly controlled visual design.

The film is shot in colour, but the hues are muted and it almost looks like a traditional black-and-white movie. Refn sticks mostly to shadowy hues, suggesting the powerful, compulsive emotions that drive the story forward.

The key feature of the film, as it turns out, is not about the cash or the cars. It's about redemption and it starts with a single mother, Irene (Carey Mulligan) and her child. They live in the same nondescript block of flats as "the Driver" and he is oddly touched by her simplicity and the innocence of her child.

For this terse, guarded man, the sight of the woman caring for her child represents a piece of the "normal life" from which he has stepped away into an emotional limbo.

"The Driver" has never before experienced a sense of personal responsibility in his own life, but the woman and her child move him to commit himself to their wellbeing, and that impulse leads him into a world of trouble, with two nasty criminals, Bernie (Albert Brooks) and Nino (Ron Perlman).

He is so used to doing the bad thing that when he needs to do the right thing, he is in unknown territory.

We know from his previous films that Gosling is a fine actor, but he is especially powerful in this role.

The film echoes classics such as De Niro's Taxi Driver, Steve McQueen's The Getaway and Ryan O'Neal's The Driver, but Drive takes a fresh and intense look at this genre, and gives it a sharper edge.

Quite apart from Gosling's amazing portrayal of this wary, defensive man, we have other compelling performances that virtually blast a hole in the screen.

Albert Brooks is best known as a comedian and his sense of timing helps him to create the perfect rendition of a deranged egotist, Bernie, a man who thinks he is a crime boss but who is really just a greedy, domineering bully.

There's not much dialogue in the film, but most of it is spoken by Brooks, in his most wheedling, spiteful tones. He looks like your cuddly uncle, but he uses a knife like a pro. It's a compelling performance that could get some Oscar attention.

The other serious bad guy is Nino (Ron Perlman) with his massive physique and huge head, playing a greedy brute in a long feud with Bernie.

Viewers might not initially grasp how these four people - the mother, the driver, and the two gang bosses - are connected, but when it all clicks into place, the last segment becomes explosive.

This combination of art-movie technique in a hard-edged thriller with thugs, whores and killers is fascinating. The actors never mistake the tone or the pace of the film and as a result Drive both draws you in and also wrings you out.