Review #683: 'Only God Forgives' (2013)

After the surprising success, both critically and commercially, of 2011's Drive, Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn has furthered his auteur aspirations with his difficult follow-up, Only God Forgives. Refn admitted in an interview that he gets a kick out of screen violence to an almost fetishistic degree, and, like Drive, Only God Forgives has moments of nightmarish violence set in a seedy criminal underworld.

Set in Bangkok, Thailand, Ryan Gosling plays Julian, a reserved young man who runs an underground boxing club as a front for his drug dealing business. His older brother Billy (Tom Burke) sets out one night with self-destructive tendencies, and rapes and murders and 16 year-old girl. The girl's father takes personal vengeance and kills Billy. Julian sets out for revenge himself, but after hearing the reasons for his brother's murder, realises that some kind of justice has been achieved and lets the man go. But with the arrival of Julian's peroxide-blonde, acid-tongued mother Crystal (Kristin Scott Thomas), Julian's hand is forced.

For a director so obviously eager to prove to everyone that he's some kind of film-making genius, Only God Forgives is surprisingly familiar in tone. Refn has gone to Thailand to make a Korean movie, full of abstract plot devices, a basic revenge premise, and some squirm-inducing, yet cartoonish scenes of torture and murder. One thing that cannot be denied is that the film looks absolutely beautiful. Like Gaspar Noe's Enter the Void (2009), this is a film seeped in neon-porn, and it's amazing how a bold flash of blue or red can make a scene instantly more wonderful to look at.

But the set design and cinematography aside, this is disappointingly empty movie, full of long moments of existential pondering and comically bad dialogue. The movie's antagonist, a crooked police chief named Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm), slices his way to his own form of justice, using a sword to execute and dismember his unfortunate victims. He is meant to be a vengeful God to Julian's sinner, and his appearances on screen are meant to fill us with dread, but instead only serves as a warning that more violence will soon implode. As a sort of idiosyncrasy, Chang sings karaoke as his police force watch him silently. It comes across a bit like Dean Stockwell in Blue Velvet (1986), but here it seems pretentious and just rather silly.

It's a real love-it-or-hate-it type of movie. On one hand, you have the technical brilliance that helps create a sleazy, slightly unnerving world, but on the other, you have the fact that this is a straight-to-DVD plot with some rather laughable dialogue. Kristin Scott Thomas, playing against type, gets to use the phrase 'cum dumpster' at an uncomfortable dinner with Julian and his 'girlfriend' Mai (Yayaying Rhatha Phongam). It all just feels like Refn is simply trying to antagonise his audience, but he really only insults them.


Directed by: Nicolas Winding Refn
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Kristin Scott Thomas, Vithaya Pansringarm, Yayaying Rhatha Phongam
Country: Denmark/France/Thailand/USA/Sweden

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie