Review of Only God Forgives (2013) by Gabe C — 16 Mar 2014

Ok. Um.... This movie....

It's obvious that Mr. Refn has creative vision. The style of this movie and the style of Drive are definitely his own.. but this time he just went overboard. He uses symbolism a lot more this time around, there's a lot of hand symbolism. I do like art-house movies but they have to make sense. The movie is just nonsense because he lets the symbolism and themes get in the way of any actual storytelling. The movie itself is a really neat idea but when you make it in this way it's just a piece of crap. There are so many scenes of surreal, almost dream-like sequences that are interesting but do almost nothing in service to the plot or characters and are therefore, pointless. I enjoy long shots of people looking at each other in an art-house movie but they have to be handled well and that is not the case here. It's really disappointing when a director lets his legitimately great, creative vision cloud everything else that goes into movie-making. I really want to like this but ehh. Nice try, but I'll take Drive over this any day.