Only God Forgives

Two years ago, Nicholas Winding Refn burst into mainstream consciousness with Drive. It's a neatly crafted, absorbing thriller, short on plot, long on violence, oozing style from every frame. The excellent supporting cast and moody score help, but its greatest success comes in reinventing Ryan Gosling as heir to the Eastwood-McQueen throne of laconic cool.

Now Only God Forgives. How? Sadly it's that all-too-common phenomena we recently examined: an ambitious artist letting praise go to his head, thus producing a grandly ambitious disaster. Everything that made Drive enjoyable warps into a black hole of pretension and nauseating violence.

Julian (Ryan Gosling) is a Bangkok boxing impresario/crime boss. When his brother Bobby (Tom Burke) is murdered, Julian seeks vengeance - but finds the culprit acted at the behest of Police Lieutenant Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm). Julian's mother Crystal (Kristin Scott Thomas) shows up, hiring goons for her own strike at Chang. Much blood is gruesomely spilled, with Julian debating whether to side with his domineering mother, to stay aloof, or maybe to blink once in awhile.

Arguably, Only God Forgives aspires to be the greatest B Movie ever made. It's got the laconic criminals of Jean-Pierre Melville, the deliberate pacing of Sergio Leone, the setting of a million kung-fu/yakuza flicks, even the gauche colors of Dario Argento. Heck, the title explicitly recalls a Terence Hill-Bud Spencer Spaghetti Western. One's reminded of Quentin Tarantino, but even QT's weakest flicks have a tongue-in-cheek self-awareness. Refn has nothing resembling a sense of humor, trying to will his kaleidoscopic mishmash of homages and gore into high art.

And what art! Refn's aesthetic sense demands that every scene, however banal or trivial, be filtered through a primary color or framed by a doorway. Splice in jump cuts and fantasy scenes, regardless of contextual appropriateness or coherence. Employ the Kuleshov Effect to an absurd degree: characters are constantly shot in close-up, ostensibly staring at each other, even when miles away. Fade out diegetic sound at will. Refn abuses these gimmicks worse than a second year film student, hoping that stealing from some Godard flick might salvage his grade.

Groggy's no shrinking violet, but even I found God's violence obnoxious. From frame one characters sloppily eviscerate each other, like refugees from Texas Chainsaw Massacre, producing only cheap shock. Characters get dismembered, disemboweled, slashed in two, machine gunned and savagely beaten, all lovingly photographed by Refn. It's not offensive so much as egregiously tasteless. Drive closely skirted this line, but at least our investment in the characters gave moments like the elevator scene a jolt. That film's not Shakespeare, but on some level you cared about The Driver and friends.

By contrast, God's protagonists spend so much time elaborately posing they might as well be mannequins: their presence is aesthetic not dramatic. These guys only show emotion when getting pinioned by hair pins. You'd expect Julian might react to his brother dying or thugs beating him to a pulp, but he remains expressionless throughout. After being informed of Bobby's proclivities, Crystal muses that her son "must have had his reasons." With a little push in this direction, God might edge into self-parody.

For all the awfulness - Chang's karaoke scenes, Crystal's nauseatingly Freudian farewell - one set piece stands out. About 70 minutes in, Julian and Chang face off in a martial arts slug fest. Refn choreographs this scene with the elaborate ritualization of a Sergio Leone duel; all that's missing is Ennio Morricone. Yet it's style without effect. Leone spends Once Upon a Time in the West, say, investing his gunslingers with mythic grandeur; they embody a bygone era where even villains observe a certain chivalry. Without such gravitas, God's antagonists are just thugs walking around slowly.

Ryan Gosling takes his Alain Delon impression to its logical extreme, showing no emotion at all. Well, except for one scene where it's hysterically inappropriate. Kristin Scott Thomas spends so much time posturing she's less Lady Macbeth, more chain-smoking lawn flamingo. Combining sadistic violence with bad karaoke, Vithaya Pansringarm chillingly invokes Kahn Souphanousinphone's father-in-law. Rhatha Phongam fingers herself and scowls in a masterful turn.

Ultimately, Only God Forgives disappoints even as a failure. With just a little more tackiness, it could have been the worst movie of 2013. Sadly for Nicholas Winding Refn and Co., that honor still belongs to The Great Gatsby.