There's a feeling that director Nicolas Winding Refn missed an opportunity to make a truly awesome crime thriller with his follow-up to Drive, and the reaction he received at Cannes (the film was booed) seems to point to the fact that the critics wished it had been a lot more like that movie. Whereas Only God Forgives can't be called a success in itself, then, there are a few wonderful, hallucinatory sequences that make the film worth your time - the most memorable of which, perhaps, takes place towards the end: a fight sequence, but not as you'd expect it. That's to say, when Julian's (Ryan Gosling) brother is murdered for killing a prostitute, he sets out for revenge, but the strange, demented Lt. Chang - tasked with wrapping up the whole mess - has other ideas. At the climax at the movie, Julian and Chang agree to battle, and it's seemingly the moment that the entire flick has been building up to. And yet Winding Refn shatters our expectations - with Clive Martinez's dark, gothic electronic score playing over the top, Julian doesn't even land a single punch. Instead, Chang beats him to a pulp without even taking a hit, and it's both hilarious and disturbing to watch it unfold. Which is presumably what Refn wanted.
