Only God Forgives

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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Year:	2013
Country of origin:	France | Thailand | USA | Sweden
Director:	Nicolas Winding Refn
Genre:	Brutal crime drama
Starring:	Ryan Gosling, Kristin Scott Thomas, Vithaya Pansringarm
Rating:	5/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1602613/
Tagline:	Time to Meet The Devil
Favourite line:	Julien: "Billy raped and killed a sixteen year old girl." Crystal: "I'm sure he had his reasons."

It's taken a while, but seems the most astonishing film of 2013 has just hit.

The plot:
Julian (Ryan Gosling), a drug smuggler making a decent living for himself in Bangkok, is sent into a downward spiral of revenge, maternal resentment and sporadic, brutal violence due to the actions of his own brother, Billy. Billy, it turns out, has a bit of a thing for young girls and, fuelled by his own illicit product, rapes and murders an underage prostitute. Turning himself in to the police, Billy is beaten to death by the girl's father, who in turn has his hand chopped off by the Chief of Police, Chang, for allowing his daughter to sell her body in the first place.
Soon after sparing the life of the girl's father, Julian find himself a figure of ridicule from his over-bearing mother, and is tasked with exacting a cruel and unusual vengeance on those responsible for her eldest son's death....

A study in poise and mannerisms, this is achingly slow, every scene framed and structured with painstaking attention to detail. The camera lingers on faces for longer than is comfortable. Characters address each other in stilted, unnatural, near non-sequiturs and, the whole time, each scene is seemingly filtered through a red mist.
Gosling, as Julian, appears to be receiving most of the plaudits, which is a little mystifying as, engaging presence though he is, he doesn't really have to do much besides gaze intently into mid-distance whilst other characters speak at him. If he delivered four complete lines in the whole film it would be a surprise and, given that he is in almost every scene, that should give an indication of the kind of stylised, art-house friendly fodder this is. Characters sit in the corners of darkened rooms, only their lips visible, the red light saturating the swirling cigarette smoke as they speak in the odd, almost alien manner which, tonally, was highly reminiscent of Cronenberg's magnificent, tabloid-baiting Crash.
At a trim 90 minutes, director Refn delivers a fat-free product that in no way outstays its welcome and, truthfully, I could easily have tolerated another hour, so majestic was the whole piece.
Courting controversy from its first screening at Cannes, this is highly divisive fare, and prompted several walkouts at my screening, which only serves to reinforce the notion that this is something very special indeed.
All indications point towards people tending to consider this either abject nonsense, or masterful movie-making.
I go for the latter.
Just brilliant.