By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 1.5 cats
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Starring: Kristin Scott Thomas | Ryan Gosling | Tom Burke | Vithaya Pansringarm | Yayaying Rhatha Phongam
Country: france, sweden, thailand, united_states
Year: 2013
Running time: 90
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1602613/combined
Chris says: “ONLY GOD FORGIVES is similar to DRIVE, only without any redeemable characters, narrative momentum, or moral structure whatsoever. That may sound a little glib, but sadly, it’s not much of an exaggeration. Once again working with director Nicolas Winding Refn, Ryan Gosling is an American drug dealer in Thailand, seeking revenge for his reprehensible brother’s death at the goading of his mother (Kristin Scott-Thomas), an operatic villain (when posed with cigarette in hand, she rather resembles a bottle-blonde, 70s-era evil Cher). Gosling has a knack for conveying a lot with his minimalist technique, but here he has nothing to work with. Scott-Thomas is far more committed in playing the vamp—it’s not a great performance but a ripe, juicy one along the lines of Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford, only with more control.
“One can admire the film on a purely technical level: the darkened, neon-suffused locales all look great and Cliff Martinez’s score is as accomplished as the one he did for DRIVE but just different enough to not feel like a retread. In every other regard, however, the film is a mess. The story makes hardly any sense, the violence often seems present only for its shock value (why does Gosling drag a seemingly random guy down a hallway by his teeth?) and, most alarmingly, the editing and pacing are entirely off—for all of his stylistic confidence, Refn’s direction feels clumsy and confused. Look, DRIVE was my favorite film of 2011—it was seductive, convincing, and psychologically complex and it contained a discernible heart, even if it was submerged under a lot of surface gloss. Here, Refn’s so fixated on the surface he’s neglected everything else; the result is pretty but absolutely joyless and consequently, excruciating. 1.5 cats”