‘Only God Forgives’ 

: the new fragrance by Nicolas Winding Refn

The facts are these: Ryan Gosling is a beautiful man. He has incredible integrity as an actor. He possesses the same easy physicality that made Harrison Ford one of the biggest movie stars of the 70’s and 80’s. A little bit of pee comes out every time I let myself believe that the casting rumours about JJ Abrams’ ‘Star Wars: Episode VII’ might be true. He has an understanding of technique and the acting process that makes Daniel Day Lewis look like Dev from ‘Coronation Street’. I have no doubt that one day he will do ‘full retard’ and bag himself the Oscar. If I was Nicolas Winding Refn I too, would want to spend as much time with Ryan Gosling as possible. I’d set up meetings to discuss our fantasy projects, I would spend every waking hour making sure that Ryan got whatever Ryan wanted. My year would look like this - three months scraping together the funding, three months of shooting, three months editing it all together and another three months promoting it around the world...just in time to head back to Ryan’s pad in LA to start the whole process again...’it seems silly to have my own place when there is so much room in your apartment Ryan’ I’d say. By my calculation that leaves exactly no time at all, to actually write a decent script and herein lies the problem.

‘Only God Forgives’ is a relentlessly bleak and sordid revenge tale that, once it has grabbed hold, drags you on a terrifying journey through the criminal underworld of Bangkok and doesn’t let go until everyone is, literally, screaming for their mummy . It has brutal sexual murders, prostitution, hard drugs, limb amputation and the worst acupuncture session scene since Derek Jarman’s ‘St Sebastian’.  What it doesn’t have is much of a script.

Don’t get me wrong, there is some pretty terrific dialog in there – mostly delivered by Kristen Scott Thomas’s Crystal - mother to Ryan Gosling’s character, Julian and his wayward older brother, Billy. Here is a role that will inevitably bring heaps of praise for Scott Thomas and will undoubtedly rank as one of her finest creations. Crystal is ruthless. She will do anything to avenge the death of her first born son, even if it means sacrificing his younger sibling. Her relationship with her children is so impossibly twisted that she makes Rose West look like Maria Von Trapp.  If this was ‘Sophie’s Choice’, Crystal wouldn’t choose either of her kids, she’d swap them both for a nice leopard skin bra top and an upgrade to first class on the way home instead.  She’s Peggy Mitchell channelling Bette Davis in ‘Whatever Happened to Baby Jane’, but with a better wardrobe and a really potty mouth.

What Nicolas Winding Refn has created is something truly spectacular and mesmerising to look at – much like Mr Gosling himself – but it all adds up to little more than the most bloody and brutal after shave commercial you’ve ever seen - ‘Only God Forgives’ by Calvin Klein.

A real acquired taste, and as such, I have a weird feeling that this perfume might smell a bit like black pudding, with a faint after-note of disappointment.

Originally written 03/08/13