Film Review | Only God Forgives

Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive (2011) was one of the most memorable breakthrough hits of the last couple of years.

Like Quentin Tarantino did with Pulp Fiction back in '94, the Danish director's Ryan Gosling-starring crime thriller reminded us of why we go to the cinema in the first place.

Instead of simply coasting on story and contrived twists and hooks, Drive was a full sensorial experience. Stylised to the hilt and awash with atmospheric electronic music, it presented a story that was by turns gritty and fairy-tale like.

Refn followed up this hit with the deeply divisive Only God Forgives, which was (finally) screened in Malta last week as part of the International Film Festival at St James Cavalier. Also starring Gosling - though only because the original lead dropped out three months before shooting was set to start - 'Forgives' boasts a similarly lush stylistic palette, made further exotic by its Bangkok setting.

But the film - dedicated to renowned Chilean surrealist Alejandro Jodorowsky - is an uncompromising affair that channels Refn's earlier work (particularly the Viking-era fever dream Valhalla Rising) and makes Drive look like a softened-up sop to Hollywood.

Gosling plays Julian, ostensibly the owner of a Bangkok boxing club but really a drug smuggler for his family business. When his brother Billy (Tom Burke) is murdered in a revenge killing by the father of a 16-year-old prostitute he raped and beat to death, Julian is expected to swiftly vanquish the perpetrator in question by his mother - the fearsome mafia matriarch Crystal (Kristin Scott Thomas).

But Julian is uneasy about executing such an order given his own brother's culpability in the matter, much to his mother's chagrin.

Taking matters into her own hands, Crystal starts a chain reaction which may just lead to the ruin of her entire family - as the city's samurai sword-wielding enforcer Lt Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm) moves in to rid his city of Crystal and her criminal brood.

As I join the ranks of the critics who actually didn't despise the film, I'm happy to acknowledge that this beautiful-but-nightmarish film isn't for everyone.

Unspooling like a dream rather than a logical sequence of events, it values atmosphere over plot and plumbs a dark, neurotic vein: our Julian has some severe mummy issues, and they prove to be the source of most of the action.

Perhaps the film wouldn't have received as much backlash from filmgoers had Gosling not stepped in to replace the original lead (who remains mysterious: Refn only said that he snubbed him to go make "the Hobbit movies"), because far from being a cog in the Hollywood machine, 'Forgives' is bound to find a more welcoming audience among fans of European cinema.

Refn makes no excuses about his characters being stripped down archetypes through and through, and while this may be a hard pill to swallow for some - coming across as contrived and flat rather than universal - it is a consistent aesthetic choice.

Pushing his vision as far away from workaday realism as possible, Refn bathes his shots in monochromatic swathes of colour - the choice more often than not being red - and the resulting effect is a menacing, claustrophobic fantasia, a hell with no exit in sight.

This kind of project of course leaves its actors with very little to do, since Refn's film is populated by character types more than fully-fledged, humane characters. Gosling in particular sticks to a vacant expression which, while in tune with the brittle, transient nature of his character, could easily be mistaken for an uninspired performance.

But the orbiting players more than make up for this gaping void. Scott-Thomas clearly enjoys playing against type: gone is the prim-and-proper British actress we all know and love, replaced by a dragon lady channelling Donatella Versace, and Pansringarm turns the 'minimalist' approach into a showcase of brooding - and terrifying - authority.

The uncompromising violence of Drive comes into full bloom here, and Pansringarm's character orchestrates its most brutal set piece... while then serenading his colleagues with Thai karaoke singing - another subtly surreal move on Refn's part, which contributes to the overarching unease of Refn's film.

Next week: The Hobbit - The Desolation of Smaug.