Review of Only God Forgives (2013) by Viet Phuong N — 25 Sep 2013

Style over substance. A lot of people have praised (and will praise) the film for following the stylish traits of "Drive", but the characters here were only thinly made with a pretentious looks (the Thai lead indeed has charisma, but his "stone" acting was simply awful) covered by over-violence (not extreme, but OVER).

The obnoxious, dark, and claustrophobic ambience, as well as the thrilling yet too-heavy-to-handle soundtrack of the film cannot raise any emotion from the audience either. This is the main difference with "Drive", which involved a lot of emotion building and had wonderful cast.

Normally a strange film will get the attention of the audience, at least to see "what the hell is this all about", but Nicolas Winding Refn a little bit overdid the strangeness of this film, which made the audience way too tired to care about its ending.

Even the haunting Ryan Gosling's eyes could not redeem this film.