Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Talent: Ryan Gosling, Kristin Scott Thomas, Tom Burke
Release Date: 2nd August 2013
When is a film not a film? When it’s a Movie! Only God Forgives is clearly a Movie with a capital M: the question is, what does this “M” say about Nicolas Winding Refn’s latest? Is Only God Forgives a “Masterpiece”? Not by a long-shot. Is it “Mature”? Well, it is violent and sweary… Is it “Melvillian”? It certainly wants to be with its sparse dialogue, fancy costuming and frequent long-takes. Is it “Moral”? No, like so many neo-noirs it exists in an amoral vacuum, where terrible people do horrible things to other terrible people with no real guiding purpose. These kinds of movies strive to be ambiguous, interpretive even, but more often than not — and as we see in Only God Forgives — stories where no-one is expressly good or evil — only shitty — make for un-engaging fare, even if they tell you otherwise through lavish cinematography or a brooding musical score. Any stylistic showiness in Only God Forgives is ultimately just that: showiness, y’know, for show. Look beneath the surface and you’ll find that there’s no heart beating within this moody, misguided, meandering, meaningless movie.
