'Drive'

"Globalization" has come to have several different connotations, and among them, I would like to suggest that it include a new trendy tendency for art-house European filmmakers to make Hollywood movies, and vice-versa. The mashup of styles and techniques has been noticeable a lot lately, what with Oscar winner "The Artist" being the creation of French director Michel Hazanavicius and America's own Martin Scorsese venturing away from his comfort zone of psychotic violence by coming out with the distinctly Parisian "Hugo."

And now "Drive," by Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn, proffers glorious Hollywood-style action fare crammed with fast cars, a sweet blonde girl, suitcases full of cash and guns galore. Once upon a time in the 1980s, this sort of thing was on every theater menu, and you got to savor the whole thing with a huge, sugary soda and gut-punchingly bad popcorn. Those were the days.

Indeed, "Drive" reeks of retro stylings, but Winding Refn (famed for the "Pusher" trilogy and "Bronson") never makes that an issue or plays upon the themes. He's far too subtle. At last year's Cannes Film Festival (where it won Winding Refn the Best Director Award), he said that much of the film was an ode to the American movies he used to watch on TV as a kid, among them "Sixteen Candles" and "Dirty Harry" — and sure enough, memories of both rise up on the screen like faint ghosts.