Drive

Just seen Drive, I agree its very similar to Thief except Gosling is younger and has another accent to that of Caan's

indeed, looked like some location were the same

I love both films and I can definitely see the influence Refn gained from Mann in his film.

Absolutely. I saw DRIVE first! Then when I saw Thief- I couldn't believe how much it was like watching the total inspiration for Drive.

I love Thief even more! It's a better movie for sure. But DRIVE is also great and also benefits from the great performance of Albert Brooks.

THIEF also has amazing performances and CAAN is the ultimate bad ass!!! This film makes you absolutely love CAAN. He kicks so much ass in this it's amazing.

When I saw the new criterion DVD for this movie, I was surprised how much it looked like "Drive", so I checked it out. Really great flick with mesmerising style, enjoyed it more than "Drive" itself.

I think Thief's main resemblance to Drive is in it's font style, it's soundtrack, and it's opening scene. Still, I think the opening scenes of Drive and Thief serve to show our characters in their element, but have different tones overall. Drive's opening scene has an impending sense of danger around every corner. I never got the sense that anyone was about to caught during the opening of Thief. I also thought Drive's opening getaway scene was a more nuts and bolts breakdown of how the escape was actually executed than Thief's opening heist was. You get a pretty thorough run down of The Driver's methods in Drive but not so much in Thief.

The big heist in Thief I felt was akin to something like the heist scene in Rififi. Two crews scouting security, infiltrating, and executing a plan. There's nothing like that at all in Drive really.

The soundtracks are also similar in style but different in tone. Tangerine Dream's Thief soundtrack is much more prominent, while Cliff Martinez's Drive soundtrack is a lot more ambient and atmospheric. That's not even mentioning the pop songs in Drive, which underscore it's themes quite a bit and make it distinct from Thief.

Beyond that the more apt comparison to Drive is Walter Hill's The Driver. Both are set in LA, both have stoic hero who says very little but is supernaturally good at a very specific job. Drive and The Driver's protagonist heavily recall La Samourai Jef Costello (The Driver is basically a remake of Le Samourai, while Ryan Gosling's unnamed character shares a lot of Costello's stoicism and mannerisms.) James Caan's Frank is a lot more flamboyant and outwardly aggressive than Gosling's character is.

Drive and The Driver are also both quintessential LA movies and borrow from LA's cinematic charm. Thief is mainly set in Chicago and it's as grimy as it sounds

Drive was ok. Had a few nice things about it visually. But Refn isn't a good dialog writer. Mann knocked it out of the park in a few scenes in Thief. The coffee scene with Jesse and the adoption office scene come to mind. Solid gold. Refn wouldn't know how to make a character say that stuff.