Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn was a film-school dropout who gained sudden acclaim at the tender age of 24 with his ultraviolent 1996 film "Pusher," which was eventually developed into a trilogy. He reached wider audiences with "Fear X" (starring John Turturro) and British crime flick "Bronson," but it was really 2011's hyper-speed "Drive" with Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan, about a stuntman who moonlights as a getaway-car driver, that broke the doors open.

I didn't especially care for Winding Refn's latest, "Only God Forgives" (see the review), but I was hardly alone in that opinion: The film was booed heartily when it debuted at Cannes, a fate usually reserved for the "Brown Bunnies" of this world. Still, the film does have its fans: The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw had it in his Top 5 for last year. Winding Refn's a good bloke, and clearly has talent, so when I sit down for an interview with him in Shibuya, Tokyo, I ask him straight up: Was he surprised by the reaction to his film?

"Well, the thing is that I've never made a movie that hasn't had this kind of reaction," says Winding Refn. "In a way, that's what I enjoy about it. I know, whether you love it or hate it, you're never gonna forget it. Art is about expression and accepting it; good or bad is kind of irrelevant. It's beyond whatever you think, because it's penetrated your mind. If you love something or hate it with such a passion, then I must have done something right." With a smile, he adds: "It's like being the Sex Pistols of cinema."