PHOEBE GALLAGHER
The new poster for “God Only Forgives”, featuring a badly-beaten Ryan Gosling, is online.
The movie reunites the actor with his “Drive” director Nicholas Winding Refn, and – if the storyline is anything to go by (it’s about a crime-lord/boxing-gym owner who seeks revenge on the guy’s that killed his brother) – promises to be just as thrilling and compelling a feature.
‘Quint’ from Aint it Cool previewed a short scene from the film, with his report suggesting we’re in-store for something pretty solid :
Of course there are a few Drive touchstones in the footage: long tracking shots, liberal use of neon lighting (in this case purple and green) and a silent, but violent Ryan Gosling.
The footage opened with a long dolly shot down a dark and exotic hallway, overlaid with titles in a foreign language I’m pretty sure was Thai. As you can imagine, already not fully understanding the intro, I was a bit confused.
It was also confusing that the dolly tracks were still visible on the floor. I’d guess those will be removed digitally in the finished film, but they oddly fit with the gaudy font and foreign titles, so maybe they were intentionally left in.
There’s not a whole lot to the footage, honestly. The camera finds a room in what now seems to be a club of some sort, possibly a high-end strip club. Two Thai men in white suits sit laughing on a long couch in one corner, Gosling sits in another staring at a nervous looking girl holding a microphone. She’s not singing or looking like she’s about to sing, just standing there looking sad and lost in her thoughts.
Gosling stands abruptly, walks calmly over to the two Thai men having a good time and proceeds to smash one of the men’s drinks into this face, shattering the glass against his teeth.
Punches are thrown, Gosling dominating the fight, which continues out into the hall where Gosling grabs the hurt man by THE MOUTH (he’s lying on the floor, gasping in pain and Gosling just goes ahead and sticks his hand into the dude’s mouth and drags him down the hall by his upper jaw) and throws him out of the building.
The man’s friend kicks Gosling from behind, they brawl and Gosling ends up not only beating them both, he decides that’s not enough and removes his belt and starts a-whippin’.
That’s it. So, yeah, no real grasp of the story, but some good old fashioned silent-but-deadly Gosling violence.
Like I said, tonally this feels like it could exist in the Drive universe, which is a good thing in my book.
