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The score and cinematography are magnificent
And, coming on the heels of Drive, it's fascinating that Ryan Gosling is NOT the "hero" of the piece
No, he's not - it's Chang. Chang is judge, jury and executioner, the avenging angel who sets things right morally, more or less.
Gosling's seeking redemption of some sort: he's helping to run a drug ring which it's implied is run by his mother, whom it is implied he and his brother had some sort of incestuous relationship with, which also in the past included him murdering his father. And so he doesn't act when his brother is murdered after raping a young girl and his uncouth mother demands revenge, because of all of that baggage, baggage that he's desperate to get rid of.
And to me, that's the problem: so much is alluded to, so much is implied, that there's barely anything to hang our hats on as viewers, save the pretty red-tinged pictures, Chang's slow Angel of Death shuffle/karaoke stylings, Gosling's sad face, and Cliff Martinez's great-as-usual music.
Oh, and we also got Kristen Scott Thomas aka Mary Sharon, chewing all of the scenery and giving the movie the life that it sorely needs.
It's kinda odd that, for a film that was so interested in being obtuse for long stretches, we saw a lot of hands, arms and fists, which were the most blatant phallic symbols I've seen in a film in quite some time.
Anyway, I appreciated the odd, slow-burn-in-hell pace but wondered at times if it was only done just to stretch the run time to 90 minutes.
I certainly wasn't expecting an action romp from Refn, nor was I expecting every single dot to be connected, but I could have used a longer starter line every now and then in the form of dialogue and/or exposition...
The movie's not terrible, just not terribly cohesive...
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But Zootown, black people and media, so...
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