Only God Forgives

Synopsis: Julian (Ryan Gosling), a drug trafficker living in Bangkok is ordered by his mother (Kristin Scott Thomas) to find and kill whoever is responsible for the murder of his partner-brother (Tom Burke) who has just raped and killed a 16 year old prostitute.

Although it ends with a dedication to Mexican director Alejandro Jodorowsky, for most people the reference points for Nicolas Winding Refn’s film will be David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino. It’s a mix of seedy underworld settings, incestuous implications, wall-to-wall thrumming music, Asian martial arts and a vigilante Thai cop (Vithaya Pansringarm) who likes to get up and croon a tune at a karaoke bar after slicing and dicing a few low lives.

With little story to speak of and no back story or development to the characters the intention is clearly to be über-cool and cultishly transgressive but despite the fact that the film is well made, with quality cinematography by Larry Smith and stylish production design by Beth Mickle, it is an aim which fails to materialize.

Jodorowsky’s films such as El Topo and The Holy Mountain have a baroque Freudian excessiveness that whilst not being for everyone have an at least credible claim to cult status. Refn’s film on the other hand is largely inert. The problem is that the pretension to some kind of surreal Lynchian dark side manifestation undermines the Tarantino-eque revelling in cartoon violence and vice versa.  The result is a film of no intrinsic interest that moves at a funereal pace.

Whilst it is nice to see Kristin Scott Thomas exchange her over-familiar elegant member of the haute bourgeoisie for a barely recognizable reincarnation as a potty-mouth peroxided crime matriarch it’s hard to understand why she put her hand up for such a gratuitously violent film unless she hadn't read the script or there simply were no other offers. Ryan Gosling on the other hand stays well within his bounds as the taciturn anti-hero of sorts.  

Although the Danish-born director has a track record of violent art house films extending back to his 1996 debut Pusher on the back of the commercial success of his previous film, Drive, which also starred Gosling, Only God Forgives is on general release.  If you want to see it, however, I’d advise getting in early as it’s not likely that word of mouth is going to give it a long screen life.

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