20131120: Thriller Review--Only God Forgives

Only God Forgives

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. Danish/French/Thai live action feature length film, 2013, rated R, 90 minutes, thriller.  Spoken word is in English and Thai.  Aspect is 1.85
2. IMDB: 5.9/10.0 from 38,976 audience ratings.  Estimated budget, 4.8 million USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 40% on the meter; 41% from 34,566 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 2.6/5.0 from 34,566 audience ratings.
5. Directed by: Nicholas Winding Refn.
6. Starring: Ryan Gosling as Julian, Kristin Scott Thomas as Crystal, Vithaya Pansringarm as Chang, Gordon Brown as Gordon, Tom Burke as Billy.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Set in Thailand. Among other things, Julian and his elder brother Billy observe fights.  Billy pays a fighter afterward, partly on Julian's advice.


2. Billy tries to get laid with a 14-year-old.  The pimp he talks to will not have it.  So Billy beats him up, terrorizes the whores, then kills one of them.  Chang arrives to see what the uniforms have found.  Billy, covered in blood, is still at the scene with the cops.


3. If I had watched this in a theatre, I would have walked out at the nine minute mark.  I would like both brothers dead and the film ended at ten minutes.  Since I'm watching on Netflix, I decided to come back to it later when I hated it less.


4. Crystal arrives from the UK to oversee Billy's burial, and to regularize drug operations in the permanent absence of Billy.  She does this more through Gordon, Billy's friend, than through the feckless Julian.


5. Julian needs to kill Crystal to assume leadership of the family business, but he does not have the moxie to do it.  Crystal despises him for this, all the more so because she made him that way.


6. Julian confronts the man responsible for Billy's death, Chang.  That might improve his self-image, but that's not his real motive, since he is absurdly outclassed.


7. Crystal's betrayals are endless.  How might this all end?


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Criminal emasculated by his drug kingpin mother seeks escape from his psychological prison; boredom ensues.
2. One star of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 4/10 The film's visuals alternate between gorgeous and quite bad.  I hate filters and strongly coloured lighting.  The heavy use of these elements in this film made it even more repulsive that the salacious subject matter.


2. Sound: 10/10 Effective for the most part.  On the other hand, there are many minutes of no dialog.  Also, many lines of dialog have no translation into English, whereas the spoken English usually has subtitles.


3. Acting: 2/10 Acting?  Ryan Gosling is catatonic.  Kristin Scott Thomas plays an embodiment of control freak, and I did not believe her performance for a moment.  Vithaya Pansringarm seemed to be taking a nap standing up during the film.


4. Screenplay: 2/10  This is a so-so seven minutes of story weighing in at 90 minutes.  There is very little dialog, which is a huge minus.  The hundreds of lines of missing subtitles make this a disaster.  Major demerits for the ridiculous use of karaoke.