Thursday, November 8, 2018

Only God Forgives (2013)



Movie Name/Year: Only God Forgives (2013)
Tagline: Time to face your demons.
Genre: Drama, Thriller, Crime
Length: 90 minutes
Rating: R
Production Companies: A Grand Elephant, Space Rocket Nation, Gaumont, Wild Bunch, Bold Films, Film Väst, Motel Movies, DR/Flimklubben, Nordisk Film ShortCut, Danish Film Institute, Nordisk Film- & TV-Fond, MEDIA Programme of the European Union
Producers: Johnny Andersen, Jessica Ask, Lene Børglum, Yves Chevalier, Brahim Chioua, Sidonie Dumas, Ryan Gosling, Jason Janego, Jacob Jarek, David Lancaster, Michel Litvak, Vincent Maraval, Hanne Palmquist, Tom Quinn, Matthew Read, Christophe Riandee, Thor Sigurjonsson, Gary Michael Walters
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Writer: Nicolas Winding Refn
Actors: Ryan Gosling, Kristin Scott Thomas, Vithaya Pansringarm, Rhatha Phongam, Gordon Brown, Tom Burke, Byron Gibson, Pitchawat Petchayahon

Blurb from Netflix: When a cop kills the brother of an expat American gangster who runs a Bangkok fight club, his crime-boss mother flies in to supervise revenge.


Cat’s Point of View:

I was actually excited to watch this movie – until it started.

I had a faint recollection of some considerable buzz about the film at the time it was released, and I generally like Ryan Gosling (Gangster Squad, La La Land, First Man) movies. I figured that I was going to be in for a kickass action movie. Boy, was I wrong.

If I weren’t committed to watching the whole film for the sake of this review, I would have stopped it and not thought twice about it. Had I paid actual money to see it in a theater? I might have walked out and asked for a refund.


The colors were pretty with all the moody lighting, but that’s the only positive thing I can offer for this utter waste of 90 precious minutes.

Gosling barely utters a word. Almost the entire movie is made up of him staring intensely. There’s hardly any action at all to the film, and there were no thrills to be had in this ‘thriller.’ It was cringeworthy for multiple reasons.

Further, why for the love of Bob did they have Gosling go through Muay Thai training if it wasn’t going to be actually used?


The pacing was slow, which just made the extended cringe seem to last forever. There were also a few sequences that were outright confusing. I couldn’t tell if Gosling’s character was actually experiencing something or if it was some sort of prophetic hallucination – or even just wishful thinking.

All told, I couldn’t in good conscience recommend this movie for anything other than illustrating the point of why I found it a vile cinematic experience. 


Languages
Speech Available: English
Subtitles Available: English [CC], Spanish

Rotten Tomatoes Critic Score – 40%
Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score –  37%
Metascore – 37/100
Metacritic User Score – 7.9/10
IMDB Score – 5.7/10

Trust the Dice: Cat’s Rating – 1/5

Movie Trailer: