Although inexplicably snubbed any Oscar nominations, Ryan Gosling had a remarkable 2011, giving outstanding performances in three consecutive films that were both critical and commercial successes, Crazy Stupid Love, Ides of March and, best of the lot, this  low key, brooding existential action thriller about a Hollywood stunt driver who moonlights behind the wheel of getaway vehicles.

Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn (also criminally overlooked among the nominations) in his highly personalised European style with its striking cinematography, unusual angles and incisive use of music, it opens with an incredible pre-credits sequence as Gosling’s unnamed driver meticulously and coolly does his thing for a couple of  break-in merchants, timing everything to the second, monitoring police band radio and navigating traffic without ever taking the toothpick from his mouth.

He says little – here or in general – and there’s pretty much nothing by way of back story to the character, but, through Gosling’s deft use of mannerisms and facial expressions, you feel you know more about him than you would from reams of exposition.

Two relationships provide the engine for the plot. In the first, he becomes platonically involved with Irene (Carey Mulligan), his sweet next door neighbour who’s doing her best to raise a young son while her husband’s inside. There’s flirtation but nothing more, although the man with no name does find himself becoming surrogate father to her little boy. When the husband does come home, Gosling offers to help out on one last job that will settle a debt owned to the gangsters threatening the family. It doesn’t go well.

The second relationship is the one he finds himself in with smooth but ruthless mobster Bernie (a chillingly good Albert Brooks) and as his partner Nino (Ron Perlman) who, through connections to Gosling’s garage mechanic friend, are bankrolling him to buy the racing car he needs. That doesn’t go well either.

Driver doesn’t pack a gun, but he’s no stranger to violence and the film has plenty of it, hard, fast and brutal. But never for the sake of a thrill. Like the car chases, of which there are several breath-stopping examples, they serve the narrative rather than being mere crowd-pleasers.

Gosling says little, but both Brooks and Perlman savour the sharp lines they’re given, their dialogue contributing greatly to the film’s gathering air of threat and menace as the entwined fates of  them, the  driver, Irene,  and a bagful of mob money gradually pull together.

An art house action movie that proves testosterone, adrenaline and brain cells are incompatible, it clearly draws on Walter Hill’s 1987 thriller The Driver in which Ryan O’Neal played the unnamed getaway man. That’s regarded as something of a classic. This is better.