ONLY GOD FORGIVES - Review

Only God Forgives

Crime/Drama, 2013
1 hour, 30 minutes
Written and Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
Rated R

Starring
Ryan Gosling
Vithaya Pansringarm
Kristin Scott Thomas

"Wanna fight?"

Nicholas Winding Refn is known for his stylish and cerebral sense of filmmaking. His big hit, Drive, starring everyone's favorite Ryan Gosling, was something we had never seen. Gripping story, tense action, and pretty much awesome everything, Only God Forgives looked like a spiritual sequel.
It isn't.
Honestly, it's just Nicolas Winding Refn jerking himself off. I've seen a couple of his other movies, like Drive and Valhalla Rising. Yes, they've visually beautiful and minimal on story and dialogue, but this takes it to a whole new level. Like, an annoying level. I really wanted to see something cool here, but there wasn't anything as far as story goes. It's basically a revenge story. Gosling's brother goes batshit crazy for literally no reason whatsoever, and he gets himself killed. So Gosling has to take revenge on the guys who killed his piece-of-shit brother. Gosling's mother gets involved, and then it turns into this fucking crazy Oedipus complex stuff which is kind of weird. But whatever.
So basically the movie is just really slow. Lots of slow walking down long hallways, lots of foreshadowing. It's just slow as hell. It clocks in at a short 90 minutes but feels like 180. There are a few cool scenes. The action is solid and sweet, in particular a really cool fight with Gosling and the bad guy whose name I can't remember. It's easily the highlight of the movie. There's no quick cuts or shaky camerawork. It's a few punches at a single angle, then a cut to another angle with a few more punches, but you actually get to see ALL of the action.
But yeah, overall, the movie is just kind of empty. I didn't feel much exiting the theater, but it looked like it could've been a crazy kind of spiritual sequel to Drive. It isn't. That being said, I didn't completely hate it, so that's something, right?
Also at one point, Gosling gets angry and screams REALLY loudly and his voice gets high pitched and its fucking hilarious. So there's that too.

6/10