Only God Forgives

Unrated

6/20/20131h 29m

Premiere Release (US)

~ Time to meet the Devil. ~

Overview:

Julian, who runs a Thai boxing club as a front organization for his family's drug smuggling operation, is forced by his mother Crystal to find and kill the individual responsible for his brother's recent death.

Director:

Nicolas Winding Refn

Status:

Released

Language:

English

Buget:

$4,800,000.00

Revenue:

$10,300,000.00

Key words:

bangkok, thailand
surrealism
punishment
suicidal
police officer
neon light
neo-noir
drug trafficker
thai boxing
emasculation
vengeance
vibrant

Cast

Ryan Gosling

~ as ~

Julian

Kristin Scott Thomas

~ as ~

Crystal

Vithaya Pansringarm

~ as ~

Chang

Rhatha Phongam

~ as ~

Mai

Gordon Brown

~ as ~

Gordon

Tom Burke

~ as ~

Billy

Byron Gibson

~ as ~

Byron

Sahajak Boonthanakit

~ as ~

Kim

Charlie Ruedpokanon

~ as ~

Daeng

Wannisa Peungpa

~ as ~

Kanita

View full cast & crew

Reviews (3)

PG
Per Gunnar Jonsson
Written 7 year(s) ago
5
It is an artistically very interesting movie. I would say that the benefit of watching this movie is entirely from the visuals were it excels. Unfortunately after a while the blood-red and, often, bizarre scenes become a bit boring.

The story, well you have it in the movie blurb above. There is not much more to it and it is just used to tie the string of artistic expressions of the director/writer together. This is a quite violent movie. The old cop, Chang, gets more than one opportunity to use various sharp instruments, mostly his sword, on various criminal elements and the effects are frequently shown in all their gory glory.

What about the actors and their performance? Well it is quite good for this type of movie but having said that the acting mostly consists of various people silently staring at each other.

I had quite a bit of difficulty in deciding what rating I should give this movie. If I would go by the visuals only it should be very high but if I would go by the rest of the content it would be rather low. In the end I decided that although I appreciated the artwork I did not really like the movie as a whole that much. Thus it gets 5 out of 10 stars.
R
RustyBoi
Written 5 year(s) ago
8
A challenging piece of cinema. Definitely not for everyone. The cinematography is breathtaking, and the violence is stomach turning. 8/10
r96sk
Written 3 year(s) ago
7
It has all the ingredients that I'd usually love in a film, but the pacing lets it down for me.

'Only God Forgives' is pretty dark and strikingly gory, with the stylish cinematography really shining through to set the right tone. Ryan Gosling, meanwhile, is good in a role which is similar to his one in 2011's 'Drive', which was also directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Kristin Scott Thomas is solid, though I couldn't get away from the thought that her character was made to be portrayed by Toni Collette. Vithaya Pansringarm plays it cool as his character.

All in all, I enjoyed it. I just didn't love it. It's a little too stop/start for my liking, as in it felt like I was watching a series of events as opposed to a fully fleshed out plot; I don't mean that the scenes feel unconnected, it just feels like every scene is too much its own thing in terms of storytelling.