By The Butcher
You love ’em, he hates ’em! The Butcher carves up your favourite films, and this week, he applies his sharpened cleaver to Nicolas Winding Refn’s award-winning, hipper-than-thou, cult-ready shocker Only God Forgives, starring Ryan Gosling, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Vithaya Pansringarm.
Oh, Ryan Gosling, how do I hate thee, let me count the ways. He played Ken in Barbie, quite possibly one of the worst blockbusters of all time, rivalled only by its crappy “other half” Oppenheimer. He got behind the wheel of that cinematic lemon, Drive. He went bonkers over Rachel McAdams in the syrupy slush that is The Notebook. And right now, he’s floating stupidly around in space, failing to convince anyone that he’s smart enough to be a high school science teacher, in the big budget dud Project Hail Mary. All these movies suck – and Ryan Gosling sucks incredibly hard in all of them – but The Butcher’s most hated flick from this Canuck drip came out way back in 2013.
That year, the utterly dreadful Only God Forgives was the recipient of The Jury Award at The Sydney Film Festival, a true indication if ever there was one of how deeply, profoundly, completely shithouse this movie really is. Starring a sleepwalking Ryan Gosling – without doubt the most overrated of all the current crop of Hollywood pretty boys, and a guy who peaked on The Mickey Mouse Club – and directed by Danish import, Nicolas Winding Refn, the film was the second collaboration of this decidedly-less-than-dynamic duo, who previously pooled their “talents” on the aforementioned and utterly execrable Drive. A Charles Bronson movie masquerading as high art, the pretentious tedium of that car-chase-flick-stuck-in-second-gear was actually overtaken by what transpired in Only God Forgives.
Perhaps mixing business with pleasure, or maybe just ripping off The Hangover Part II, Refn set the film in Bangkok, and in an obvious move to “court controversy” and prove what a typically weird, envelope-pushing Danish person he is, he made the “hero” of his film a drug dealer. Oooh, naughty! Pushed around by his annoying mum, Crystal (is-she-French-or-is-she-English Kristin Scott Thomas should have been cured and put on a deli shelf considering her ham-bone performance here), Gosling’s wimpy drug pusher, Julian, is forced into avenging his murdered, fellow-gear-spruiking brother (who himself was murdered after having his sleazy, murdering way with an under-aged prostitute!), which puts him on the shit-list of a top-ranking Bangkok cop (Vithaya Pansringarm), who, despite being a bit fat and about eighty-years-old, can still run around the crowded city streets like Usain Bolt, and chop people up with his handy sword like he’s Uma Thurman in Kill Bill.
Filled with “dreamy” images and contrived-to-shock scenes of extreme violence (Pretty Boy Gosling gets brutally bashed by the old-fogey-in-blue, and another bloke gets tortured with chopsticks and a handy selection of smorgasbord accoutrements…seriously), Only God Forgives is the worst kind of arthouse clap-trap. Sure, the too-cool-for-school fans of the film out there might crap on about its “rich visual symbolism”, but this is one cinematic transgression that neither God – nor anyone else, for that matter – should forgive!
Want to read more from The Butcher? Check out his angry missives against One Battle After Another, Birdman, Lethal Weapon, Blazing Saddles, Strictly Ballroom, Donnie Darko, Psycho, 12 Years A Slave, Red Dog, The Wolf Of Wall Street, Breathless, Elizabeth, Miracle On 34th Street, The Full Monty, There Will Be Blood, Les Miserables, The King’s Speech, Picnic At Hanging Rock, The Magnificent Seven, Gone With The Wind, The Right Stuff, 81/2, Pulp Fiction, Easy Rider, The Shawshank Redemption, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Wizard Of Oz, Jaws, Black Swan, Gladiator, Chopper, I’m Not There, Interstellar, Marvel Studios and Citizen Kane.
