Nicholas Winding Refn‘s Drive starts today with a 94% Rotten Tomatoes rating, making it easily the best-reviewed opener. Boxoffice.com is projecting a $12.7 million weekend tally in 2886 theatres, or $4400 per situation. The cool people are onboard, but the styrofoam ADD crowd isn’t…or not yet. Justin Lin‘s Fast Five, a synthetic, bloated car flick that’s unfit to wipe Drive‘s boots, took in $86,198,765 in 3644 theatres when it opened last April…go figure.
Here’s my one and only issue with Drive, apart from my general aversion to artery-slashing. It has two brilliant, super-cool, high-threat driving scenes. (It also has a nice happy-drive moment along the L.A. river bed plus a brief nighttime chase scene plus a movie-set stunt crash sequence.) My issue is that I wanted more visceral thrills . For a movie with this title, I would have preferred three high-octane, acute-danger sequences instead of two. That’s my only beef.