I never thought a crime drama with Ryan Gosling as a convincing badass and Albert Brooks as a cold-blooded mobster – and both men capable of doing some serious damage to another person without a millisecond’s hesitation – would ever exist anywhere outside the imagination of a deranged lunatic who is clearly unfamiliar with the time-honored Hollywood axiom “cast to type.”

But last year’s Drive, which was originally intended to be a big-budget formula action flick with Hugh Jackman in the lead, came out of nowhere to shatter expectations in a way that was as quick and brutal as how Gosling dispatched that one guy in the elevator scene that has now become a classic movie moment. It wasn’t a massive hit, but most of the people who saw it agreed that it was of 2011’s best films, and it even inspired the single goofiest lawsuit taken out against a movie in some time.