Bangkok - think before you book

My bowel is still on edge after seeing Nicolas Winding Refn's latest offering, the much anticipated 'Only God Forgives'. I like to think I can stomach film violence. I'm a big Scorsese fan, I've sat through quite a few of Tarantino's offerings and have watched more mafia drama than I've had hot dinners yet all of the dead bodies in the fridge/acid dunkings in the world could not have prepared me for the 90 minute bloodbath I was about to witness. Brief plot outline: Bang-cock. Gosser’s brother rapes and murders a 16 year old prozzie (welcome to Thailand!) and is, in turn, beaten to a pulp by girl’s father (revenge, innit blad) Gosser’s mother descends on Bang-cock to pick up the body and encourage another revenge hit on girl’s father. Lots of blood, freaky swords, karaoke, dodgy locales, fried food, fags.

It’s a big coup for Gosser’s Tossers as he is superb – in fact, they’re ALL superb! Kristen Scott Thomas royally sticks two fingers up to the Franco-English bellends who continue to typecast her as a) Upper class bitch b) Foreign housewife with a penchant for ménage-a-trois/homewrecking/fags (with the exception of Minghella’s masterpiece ‘The English Patient’, Canet’s ‘Ne le dis a personne’ and Claudel’s ‘Il y a longtemps que je t’aime’ in which her acting chops are allowed to let rip). In OGF, she plays a wealthy drugs moll who has spawned two twisted arseholes, one of whom has paedophilic tendencies and the other who specialises in long looks and silence. In possibly the most talked about scene of the film, the mother reveals to the prostitute (?) companion of Gossers that his brother was the far better endowed of the pair in the underpants department. Hilarious and only slightly awkward at best. The only problem is the thin plot and laughable scenes of dodgy prozzies and improvised karaoke-for-killers.

The shots are beautiful and complex, like magnificent photographs. The use of colour scheme is also inspired, evoking a real sense of the squalid yet wealthy world in which these characters operate. If you do go, make sure you see it at the cinema as I think that the small screen (iphone?? WHAT!!!) will just not quite do it justice. I can understand why people hate it – the violence is truly gratuitous and maybe there’s a little too much style over substance. Half the audience at the cinema we went to left! See it for Scott Thomas and Gosling if nothing else, they are both superb.