Only God Forgives

Nicolas Winding Refn's follow-up to Drive reunites him with star Ryan Gosling for a cross-cultural tale of American criminals in the Thai underworld. Julian (Gosling) is a reluctant gangster, pushed by his crime-lord mother, Crystal (Kristin Scott Thomas), to avenge the murder of his older brother, a drug smuggler who used a boxing club as a cover and got his kicks from torturing and killing child prostitutes. "I'm sure he had his reasons," says Crystal (without a trace of irony), as she hires hitmen to go after Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm), the avenging street cop who killed her son. Only God Forgives is a very lurid and violent film, serving up an abstract passion play set in the slums of Bangkok, bathed in intense greens and reds. Gosling walks through all this as if in a trance, while the cop exacts his own brand of Old Testament justice with a sword he pulls out of his back collar like a diminutive samurai superhero, afterward heading to the karaoke club to sing away his sins. A pulp fiction revenge fantasy, full of extreme violence, sexual depravity, and desperate poverty—with Gosling playing something of a romantic dropped into the family drug business—this film is beautiful to look, but is ultimately just B-movie exploitation with pretentions to artistic grace. Not a necessary purchase. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include audio commentary by writer-director Nicolas Winding Refn, behind-the-scenes featurettes (24 min.), interviews with Refn (12 min.), and a music featurette with composer Cliff Martinez (9 min.). Bottom line: a solid extras package for a cinematic misfire.] (S. Axmaker)