Why "Only God Forgives" almost worked

Allow me to preface this by saying that I really enjoyed this film, and draw inspiration from it every day as a filmmaker myself. While this film is polarizing and there will always people who don't like it because it's "pretentious" or "style over substance", I think there is one frustrating thing that holds this film back from its potential, and that is the casting of Ryan Gosling.

To understand why I think this, let's compare and contrast the Driver and Julian, who are visually very similar characters. They're both very quiet, handsome people, both have a talent that they specialize in, and they're both very capable of violence.

However, these characters have one huge difference, and that is that Driver is never dominated by anyone. Driver is quite literally a cool-to-the-bone superhero, who goes to any lengths necessary to not be controlled by anyone. Julian, on the other hand, is dominated by virtually every important character around him. His mother, the cop, even his "girlfriend" all have control over him, the only time we see him take control of anything is when he kills the other assassin before the assassin kills the child.

But even with these differences, Julian still looks just as cool as Driver. He has the same stride, the same silence, the same face, the same humility, and the same capability of violence. Yes, I realize that this film is anything but Drive 2 (if anything it's Valhalla Rising 2), but I'm not sure if Gosling realized this. Julian is a man that is constantly taken advantage of and pushed around, and his actions reflect that, but his appearance is far too confident. I think that simply with a more vulnerable or scared-looking actor Julian could have been much more visible to the audience for who he was.