FILMOnly God Forgives
(18) 90mins
★★★✩✩
IN A NUTSHELL
Director Nicolas Winding Refn's gory Bangkok revenge flick is full of stylish flair but, ultimately, feels empty.
REVIEW
If the puppeteers behind Team America: World Police decided to make an OTT Bangkok revenge flick, it might be Only God Forgives.
The cast are marionettes - entirely expressionless despite the interminable horrors - and their perambulations - which appear to occupy vast lengths of the film, are slow and measured and wholly artificial.
The pretensions of the film are cleverly sustained but, surely, it is only one blood-gushing torture scene away from parody.
This is stylish, arthouse vengeance executed with panache. Director Nicolas Winding Refn has proved his visionary credentials in Bronson and Drive and here there is a familiar swash of tawdry rain-soaked neon, colour-coded scenes, self-conscious framing and preponderance of red.
The story is simple and the words are few to allow time for the camera to reflect upon what it sees.
With her bleach blonde hair and leopard print everything Kristin Scott Thomas is foul-mouthed guilt-trip, drug-trip dragon mum Crystal.
She comes to Bangkok to force laconic second son Julian (Ryan Gosling) to hunt down the cop who allowed her first son to get killed, itself an act of vengeance.
Because they're all zen psychos. She is. Her eldest son was. The second son is. Even the cop is. Especially the cop. For Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm) is not only a cop but an avenging angel.
So the tit-for-tat slayings play out like a stately Jane Austen ball with sword flicks instead of dosey-does. And yet despite the skewerings, and beatings and choppings and slicings, the overriding tone is one of stillness.
Whether you like this desolate hypnotic Lynchian gore-fest or not will depend on how many Carlings you drink before viewing.
Drink many.
