Review – Only God Forgives

The title of this film does not make for an idle statement. The opening scenes of this film are tough to watch, as an American beats a group of Thai sex workers and then rapes and murders a sixteen-year-old girl. It’s an unforgivable act, both for the characters in the story and the audience in the cinema, and I wouldn’t blame anyone if they got this far and decided this movie wasn’t for them. For those who are prepared to stick around, though, what follows is an exploration of corruption, duty and morality through the escalation of reciprocal violence.

Julian Thompson (Ryan Gosling) operates a boxing ring in Bangkok with his brother, Billy (Tom Burke), the American whose acts of misogynistic violence set the stage for this film. Julian is positioned as the neutral in this story, the impassionate observer who must choose between the warring forces of his drug-pushing mother Crystal (Kristin Scott Thomas) and those of the mysterious police investigator, Lieutenant Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm). Vithaya gives the stand out performance here, as he works to return order to the city – it’s as singular and disturbing as that of Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men. Ryan, in contrast, comes across as a mannequin in the drama, an underwear model who doesn’t belong. I can swallow it as a stylistic choice, to have an angelic and other-worldly antagonist, but that didn’t stop it from taking me out of the action every time he appeared on screen. Ultimately, I think it’s director Nicolas Winding Refn’s preference for such unadulterated style which will determine the experience you have with this film.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAgirTtfobk&w=400]