Review: Only God Forgives

Ryan Gosling stars as a Thai-based drug dealer and owner of a kickboxing club, the latter of which is really a front for the former. His wayward brother Tom Burke has raped and killed a 16 year-old prostitute. The girl’s father is distraught and turns to ex-cop Vithaya Pansringarm for guidance. The ex-cop tells the father he must kill Burke, which he promptly does. This brings about the arrival of the brothers’ mother, Kristin Scott Thomas, who wants bloody revenge for the murder of her favourite son. This ugly, bloody situation is surely going to get even worse as Gosling and Pansringarm are clearly set on a collision course.

 

This is my third Nicolas Winding Refn film after the cool “Drive” and the pretentious but memorable and violent “Valhalla Rising”, and this 2013 revenge drama/thriller isn’t quite on the level of those films. In fact, it is a little emptier than those films on the whole. However, none of the three films is remotely boring, and the writer-director certainly has a lot of undeniable talent. This one certainly isn’t boring, and whilst reminding me of a lot of other filmmakers’ work (Kubrick and Tarantino come to mind), it’s very much its own thing, too. This is essentially a straight-up, ultra-violent revenge film served cold and hard as hell, but looking like it was directed by a post-“Dr. Strangelove” Stanley Kubrick.

 

To be honest, I think Ryan Gosling has played the glaring, monosyllabic thing one time too many (he wants to be Steve McQueen, but isn’t as interesting to me), and although sometimes extremely attractively shot by Larry Smith (who indeed shot the Kubrick dud “Eyes Wide Shut”), the film is a tad repetitive, visually. It’s all uninteresting stares, and way too many dreams/visions/whatever that slow the film down just a tad too much.

 

But at the same time, I couldn’t look away and I wasn’t bored for a second, even with the slowed down pace. I was especially mesmerised by the performance from Vithaya Pansringarm as the mysterious, almost Terminator-esque ex-cop (who it could even be argued, might be One-Eye from “Valhalla Rising” reincarnated. If you think about it, it kinda fits). He may not have a terribly imposing frame, but his Hannibal Lecter-like posture is inexplicably unsettling, and he immediately if quietly announces himself as a man with whom to absolutely not fuck. He absolutely walks off with the whole film with a scary and quietly intense performance. The funny thing is, it’s he, not Gosling, who is really on the side of ‘good’ here. Gosling may in some ways be a ‘good guy’, but he’s exacting revenge for the death of a repugnant creep who deserved it, and he’s doing so on the orders of a nasty criminal- who just happens to be his own mum. I’ve never much liked Kristin Scott Thomas, but she’s really something special in this one as a tough woman with no filter and possibly no morals, either. She makes an immediate impression too, as a ghastly piece of work on more than one level (The actress ain’t looking her best). I was also struck by the film’s use of music and sound, and although it gets repetitive, the film’s bold use of colour and shadow is memorable.

 

I can see why this pretentious film has divided critics. It definitely won’t be for everyone, it was even booed at Cannes, apparently. It’s a simple, violent revenge film with an arthouse veneer that might be off-putting to fans of violent revenge films or arthouse cinema. I think its merits are more in the former than the latter, it’s not as profound or artistic as the director probably thinks. Still, I found it oddly compelling and entertaining of sorts, if a little repetitive. I kinda dug it, God help me, but its pretentious approach to exploitation plotting and violence will definitely annoy some.

 

Rating: B-