Review of Only God Forgives (2013) by Eero V — 08 Jan 2015

Only God Forgives is the most embarrassing art-house masturbation project since David Cronenberg's fetid Cosmopolis. Nicolas Winding Refn made one of the best crime films of recent years with Drive, but with this second collaboration with star Ryan Gosling his artistic ambitions have crashed and burned.

Refn sometimes manages to create an effectively nightmarish atmosphere (with the help of Larry Smith's cinematography and Cliff Martinez's haunting score), but the symbolism is campy, the violence meaningless and revolting, the characters shallow numbskulls, and the performances apathetical.

Ryan Gosling acts about two minutes of the 90-minute running time and otherwise just stares into emptiness, and Vithaya Pansringram displays some impressive swordplay skills but nothing else. Kristin Scott Thomas performs better; her role as Gosling's manipulative mother works as the perfect metaphor for the film itself: attractive and live on the outside, but cold, cruel, hollow and sadistic on the inside.

The goofy scenes featuring Pansringarm's character singing karaoke at a bar at the latest prove that this is all just a bad joke. Refn's film is outrageously pleased with itself, preposterous and mind-numbing; every image seems to be saying: "Hey, look, this is really profound and ambiguous stuff that says something universal about human nature!" No.

It is just like some strange liquor developed by Refn himself, which some will fall in love with and get gloriously drunk (most certainly Refn himself), while others just find their heads deep in their barf bags.

Only God Forgives represents the deepest and dreariest of cinematic sludge.