Review of Only God Forgives (2013) by Kane M — 23 Nov 2013

Crystal: Just let me tell you, if the tables were turned, your brother, would have found your killer, and brought me his head on a platter!

"Time To Meet The Devil".

Only God Forgives is as big a disappointment as I have had from a film experience in quite some time. I remember being extremely excited when I first heard about this. I mean Nicholas Winding Refn and Ryan Gosling teaming up again after the masterpiece of Drive sounded like a sure thing, but I guess there truly is no such thing. .

A sadistic cop kills the brother of an English gangster who runs a fight club in the underworld of Bangkok. His mother shows up and tries to pressure him into finding his brothers killer and killing him. That's about all of what makes up the plot and from that vantage point, it's pretty simple. But the movie has a weird way of boring the audience into confusion. While the movie is extremely violent and obsessed with it's strange style, it's also extremely dull and boring.

While Drive was a success with the same, low dialogue, high style way of presenting a story; Only God Forgives is a massive failure. It's easy to see why the film was pulverized by critics and booed at Cannes. What does this movie really leave us as an audience with when we're done. It seems like it's just being strange for the sake of being strange.

As much as it pains me to say this as much as I respect Gosling and Refn, there is absolutely no reason I can think of as to why you would need or even want to watch this movie. It serves almost no merit what so over and is more of a tedious exercise in style more than anything else. A complete waste of time.