Only God Forgives (2013)

In 2011, Nicolas Winding Refn and Ryan Gosling hit the critical jackpot with Drive, a brutally violent, stylish thriller that somehow took a scene of Gosling stomping a man’s head into oblivion and made it one of the most romantic cinematic gestures of that year. It was masterful work by Winding Refn, made better by a haunting Gosling performance, and it left many film fans wondering where this duo was going to take them next. Very few could have anticipated the disheartening regression that is Only God Forgives, which feels like the result of Winding Refn learning all the wrong lessons from the success of his previous film. Despite the distant protagonist and shocking brutality, Drive was a film that quite clearly had a soul hidden beneath the potentially alienating exterior. There’s no such soul to be found here, and despite his ability to compose some truly alluring shots, Only God Forgives ultimately fails because Winding Refn chose to go too far down his own rabbit hole.

In fact, this might be the first film in history to be actively worse when Gosling is onscreen. This is certainly not his fault, but rather the result of Winding Refn attempting to recreate the magic of The Driver and coming up well short. Gosling plays Julian Thompson, an American in Bangkok who operates a boxing club as a front for the local drug trade. One night, his brother Billy (Tom Burke) goes into town and winds up raping and killing an underage prostitute. As you do. The father of the prostitute (Kovit Wattanakul) then kills Billy, and at that point the wheels of this film's vengeance machine have only begun to spin. When Crystal (Kristen Scott Thomas), the hateful mother of Billy and Julian, comes to town, things continue to spiral out of control. She demands that all involved in her son’s death pay for their actions, and every move she makes is answered by the local police enforcer named Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm), who enjoys killing people with various long, sharp blades. The cycle of violence continues, and as it drudges on it becomes clear there will be no peaceful ending.

The title alone makes the film’s point of view clear from the outset. This is a land of characters who are unwilling to let bygones be bygones. Winding Refn cloaks his Bangkok in enough red light to suggest, none too subtly, that these characters have placed themselves in a particularly bleak version of hell. Unfortunately, Winding Refn never allows us a way into his story. Every character within is doomed to be at least somewhat detestable, but without some kind of connection to the material the series of killings he’s depicting come off as both sadistic and perfunctory, which is not the best combination. Only God Forgives just becomes an endless parade of bloodshed and misery, and it’s made worse by being so depressingly predictable.

Really, the film’s problems can all be traced back to the character of Julian, who is a shell of a human being. Like The Driver, he is a man of few words. Unlike The Driver, there’s no clear motivating force behind everything he does. The line between the two characters may be thin, but the end results are drastically different. The Driver didn’t emote much, but he was clearly always feeling something. Julian is not a character, and try as Gosling might to give him some kind of humanity the challenge ultimately proves to be too great. Occasionally Winding Refn is able to get some level of momentum going, but then he brings Julian right back into the picture and then all the energy immediately disappears. The only times we get any sense of him as a person are when other characters talk about him. Whenever he shows up, it’s a black hole.

Only God Forgives doesn’t fare that much better without him, but at least the other players have a tangible sense of personality. Scott Thomas is most memorable, despite the fact she’s playing one of the most detestable characters you could ever imagine. She spits out each one of her lines like venom, and while much of her dialogue his a bit ridiculous (“I’m sure he had his reasons”) she gives the film a pulse it so desperately needs. Winding Refn also mostly wastes a memorably creepy performance by Pansringarm, who plays the invincible villain role quite well. It’s just a shame so many of his scenes feel stilted and mechanical. A more interesting film might have focused exclusively on the conflict between Scott Thomas and Pansringarm as they try their hardest to take the other one down.

Instead, Winding Refn decided to bring the likes of Julian into the mix, and the way he handles the relationship between his protagonist and Scott Thomas verges on the embarrassing. The two of them share a brazenly Oedipal relationship, and Only God Forgives goes out of its way to make it as unsubtle as possible. It barely bothers to let the audience do the math, and that’s never more apparent than in the final scene between this unique mother/son duo. What happens is so absurdly on-the-nose (and disgusting) that the only thing missing is Winding Refn walking onscreen and explaining to the audience what they’ve just seen. Between the Gosling/Scott Thomas “subtext” and the occasional scenes of Pansringarm singing karaoke in front of his fellow officers, Winding Refn adds on an extra layer of unearned pretension that’s sure to alienate even more viewers than he already has.

Therein lies the problem. Normally, Winding Refn’s style is able to complement the material and give it a dreamlike quality. With Only God Forgives, he takes it so far that every last extraneous touch feels wholly artificial. The characters here move so slowly and robotically that it becomes laughable, the lighting and composition is so “artfully” done that the audience will never forget they are watching a movie, and the dialogue is so sparse and flavorless that the characters can’t even bother to say anything interesting. The brilliant Winding Refn that made Drive is still occasionally able to shine through, but with Only God Forgives he is buried beneath a pile of his own worst tendencies.

Grade: C-