On paper, "Only God Forgives" is a film I should love: Ryan Gosling and Kristin Scott Thomas, both personal faves, star in a surrealist film noir set in the seedy brothel side of Bangkok, a milieu just waiting for some movies to be shot there. Its director is Nicolas Winding Refn, who hit his peak with his last film, "Drive," which earned him the best-director award at Cannes in 2011. It has Cliff Martinez, one of the most original composers working in film today ("Solaris," "Drive"), doing a hypnotic soundtrack, while the set design and cinematography — by Russell Barnes and Larry Smith respectively — make for an intense visual hit, drenched in hellish bordello reds that Gaspar Noe would surely approve of.
So why then did "Only God Forgives" — if I'm totally honest about it — suck so hard? Why did I almost doze off during the last reel? Why did I spend a couple of days tossing it around in my head looking for deeper impressions, and still wind up thinking it's all a load of rubbish?
"Only God Forgives" is basically a blurry revenge flick, played in a trance, and drained of motivation, character and logic. Gosling plays Julian, an expat running a boxing gym in Bangkok with his brother Billy (Tom Burke), who exits the story early after raping and murdering a young girl — no reason given — and then sitting around waiting for his punishment. The cops show up, led by a veteran named Chang — Vithaya Pansringarm, playing the movie's "god" — who decides the proper thing to do is let the girl's father kill Billy in return, although he lops off one of the father's hands afterward with a machete for allowing his daughter to work as a hooker in the first place.