I was first made aware of the movie “Drive” during my summer internship with the Los Angeles Film Festival. It was our opening night film, completely sold out. The line to get in took up one whole street of downtown LA. One gentleman was even walking around with a cardboard sign that read “HELP. NEED TICKET FOR DRIVE.”

For the rest of the film festival, I heard about how violent yet great the movie was. Violent indeed. I can’t say that I thought it to be a great movie though. It started off great, but then lost precision once a muddled plot kicked into gear.

Ryan Gosling plays The Driver, a nameless Hollywood stunt driver and wheelman by hire. He chauffeurs his clients around Los Angeles without showing any kind of remorse that he’s an accomplice to crime. He’s a driver and in today’s economy, work is work.

The Driver meets his next door neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan) and son Benecio. When her husband named Standard (Oscar Isaac) is released from prison, Standard hires him to help retrieve the Mafia’s money from a pawn shop. But when the heist goes wrong, The Driver find himself the target of a dangerous mob.

“Drive” is an arthouse take on high-octane blockbusters such as the “Fast and the Furious” franchise or “Transporter.” It is terrifically directed by Nicholas Winding Refn. We get some great shots in the movie.

Anyone familiar with art films should know they’re not over-the-top with action like “Fast and the Furious.” “Drive” is slow-paced. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I personally didn’t mind it. But those expecting unbelievable feats of gravity-defying action will be let down. This is what “Fast and the Furious” would look like if the franchise’s creator had heard of the word plausibility. Or gravity, for that matter.

But Refn still doesn’t skimp on the action. The film opens with a fantastic chase sequence, where The Driver takes his clients on a job, then wisely uses the streets of downtown Los Angeles to evade the L.A.P.D. And there’s some pretty entertaining action in the film, too. At one point, The Driver stomps a guys head into the elevator floor and doesn’t quit stomping until the head on the guy’s shoulder no longer exists. Dude, awesome.

Ryan Gosling is so intrinsically fascinating to watch on screen that he makes the main character interesting, even though he isn‘t supposed to be. Despite the character having no name to speak of, Gosling still makes him interesting yet empty. It’s a nice balancing act. He and Carey Mulligan fuel a surprisingly gentle love story, too.

The soundtrack is first-rate. Heavy on the synthesizer, “Drive” sounds like it could have been made in the late ’80s or early ’90s.

Well, everything was going great in the first half, but once the plot really gets going, the film just lost me entirely. It essentially turns into an uninteresting version of “The Sopranos.” And not only is it uninteresting, it’s extremely convoluted. I was confused on why certain characters were doing what they were doing. I even started getting confused as to who was who.

For all of the flair, energy and strength in the first half, the film kind of cops out towards the end, and goes on an auto-pilot that I just couldn’t get interested in.

With the film starting out so strong, original and bold, I don’t know why Refn decided to turn the film into a conventional mob drama that’s not engaging. It’s as if he was so keen on trying something so different, then petered out at the end because the film would have been too neo-noir.

I compare the first half of the film favorable to “The Crow,” which is a completely brainless film. But like the earlier half of “Drive,“ it’s got style, energy and a charming leading man that justified its existence without a plot.

When The Driver finally takes Standard on his mission, there were about a hundred different ways the plot could have went, and “Drive” goes down the one I was hoping it would avoid. The plot could have been so much more interesting than it was. When the plot meandered into the storyline it chose, my heart sank at the realization that I was witnessing a giant misstep and even bigger missed opportunity.

Still, despite being a mixed bag and missed opportunity, I give “Drive” a modest recommendation for the ever-appealing Gosling, the style, the soundtrack and how it mostly tried to be different. Anyone that is looking for an action picture that isn’t about all mindless action will enjoy it, maybe.

But with the film receiving critical acclaim, including a Palme d’Or nomination and standing ovation from the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, plus a 93 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, I just feel like this is one bandwagon I’ll let pass by.

Let’s just hope that guy holding the sign in LA gets to finally see “Drive,” and that he’s not as disappointed as I was.