It's Not True! Not Only God Forgives!

Think he'll use those fists?
Think that lens flare is going to save his soul?

Seriously, human beings will forgive a lot. I know this, because the movie Only God Forgives is an atrocious pan through beautiful colors and lighting, a la David Lynch. Glancing through the chat boards on the film's IMDB page, however, reveals the sympathetic souls who deem this an instant classic doomed to the hatreds of short-sighted contemporaries and small-minded poop skulls who hate on slow, twisted, violent movies with no sympathetic characters and nary point of interest in sight.

Which is how most people seem to feel about the Danish-French-Thai flick improbably starring a dreamy American man in the Thai drug world. Open minded viewers can see the feasibility of Ryan Gosling being the son of Kristin Scott Thomas, but not the brother of Tom Burke. Normal viewers can see the feasibility of massive drug cartels in Thailand, but not so much the super white guy running it. Artsy viewers get stuck on the sets and lighting, letting the atmosphere (which is, indeed, brilliant) lull them into thinking the drawn out scenes are equally well-executed.

The problem is not that scenes are slow, and dialog minimal. The words coming out of these characters' mouths are great: they're, articulate of both plot and character development, and fun to hear. Kristin Scott Thomas' opening monologue is killer, albeit 2 lines long.

Her mother character is exactly Lady Macbeth meets Donatella Versace -- if such a creature were the single mom and head of an international drug operation. I want to see this character in other situations, ruling different underworlds, fucking with other people's lives.

Similarly, the brothers are engrossing manifestations of how bad individuals can be. The writing pits them not against, but away from each other, as though they both spring from mom's twisted womb, one anal retentive, one anal expulsive, and both unable to relate sexually to anyone in the real world.

Which is where the wrongness starts. Of course one is a rapist/murderer, the other a possibly impotent lock-box. However, there is nothing else to illustrate this. There's a whole boxing ring set with dozens of fighters and bookies to play with -- untouched. You're in Bangkok, don't try to tell me there isn't crazy dog fighting, snake-blood-drinking, trafficking, hostel busting, beach combing, boat using, fun going on. Not even mentioned or shown. The scenes that could fill those lousy minutes of Ryan Gosling looking at his own hands or improbably hallucinating about hallways are innumerable. The best we get is a shoot out in a noodle shop, and some guy's arm sliced off with a machete near a train.

Nope.

Which leads me to the second major thing wrong with this flick. The stylization of the sets, dialog, and totally uptight blocking go so overboard that they blur together and make each scene mockable rather than tense. The only scene for which is actually works is after Gosling brings his hot hooker to meet his Macbeth Mommy for dinner. KS Thomas throttles the scene, Gosling lights her cigarette automatically, and the hooker shows improbably rational, and emotionally stable spunk. For her efforts Gosling makes her strip in an alley way to put her in her place. Yep. It's crazy good at showing all their POVs on life (even though the hooker's isn't believable).

Unfortunately, everything else is dulled into a glam-grunge morass of boredom.

You can see how well these shots are put together.
Too bad nothing is done with them.

Third: the cop. The story is pretty neat, if cliche. Dirty Harry with machete takes unorthodox, and unprecedentedly violent measures to restore the spirit of the law. There's even a sweet training-with-machete-at-dawn scene to show how serene this guy is. But, uh, there are also too many Lynchian kareoke scenes where all audience members sit like statues. That's alot of screen time to tell your audience just one thing. We get it. He's revered and artistic. Use those scenes for another thing or three. Have his safe kareoke spot threatened by some improbable but reciprocal hallucinations of Gosling. Build us a relationship between these adversaries. If director/writer Refn doesn't want to go that route, fine, there are other things you can do, don't just glut your screen with repetitive crap.

Ug. That's why it's bad. Not because "it's slow". Not because it's too violent or too sexually twisted. Because it has a shimmer of idea and fails to express it adequately in the medium the creator has chosen.