A synth-lit fairy tale about a man who is only good at one thing.
Sold as an action film, delivered as a very slow romance with four bursts of appalling violence. Refn understands that a getaway is mostly waiting: the opening five minutes are a masterclass in tension built from a police scanner and a stopwatch. The scorpion jacket should be ridiculous and instead it's iconography. It loses a half-star for treating Irene as a lamp rather than a person, but the elevator scene remains the cleanest statement of the film's whole thesis — tenderness and brutality in one unbroken shot.