4. The Good Bits Are Underplayed, The Bad Bits Are Over-Indulged
There are a few good elements in Only God Forgives - it is visually very good, and Refn clearly knows how to frame shots - but they are few and far between, and we're left wanting more in almost every case. Kristen Scott Thomas is the pick of the acting bunch, stealing every shot she is in with some ribald language that doesn't stop at the barriers named taboo, and displaying the sub-human anti-charisma that made Drive's Nino and Bernie so engaging. But she's not given enough screen-time, and her resolution isn't grand enough by half. Then there's Vithaya Pansringarm's creeping jesus of a villain, who is wonderfully remorseless and devastating, but who is mishandled, and isn't given enough of a backstory or motivation to make him really enduring. He feels more like the henchman who gets offed before the big bad reveals himself, and the choice to make him walk so slowly becomes infuriating by the time the film hits 90 minutes. And then, even more frustratingly, Refn chooses to over-extend those lingering shots of Gosling, and the perversely voyeuristic scenery shots, and includes four separate karaoke sequences that rob the first of its comic and grotesque impact. It's like he's consciously toying with us as an audience - pushing an agenda of provocative anti-entertainment, rather than setting out to make something engaging in traditional terms.