Only God Forgives is the definition of arthouse trash with no direction. Refn seems to have only focused on creating a visually-stunning film with a thumping electronic soundtrack and thrown everything else to the wayside. Saying the script is incoherent and uneventful would be giving it too much praise. The film's razor-thin, cheap revenge story takes up about 15 minutes of the film while the rest is just a series of clunky dialogue, Ryan Gosling by himself staring blankly into space, ultra-quick flashes of violence (which is not nearly as graphic as other critics made it out to be) and random shots of grimy scenery in Bangkok. I will fully admit that this film is stunning to look at and it starts off promising in the first 15-20 minutes until Gosling's mother (Kristin Scott Thomas in one of the worst performances I've ever seen in my life) then the film wanders completely into no man's land and becomes almost completely unwatchable. The last 70 or so minutes are agonizingly tedious to sit through and the alarming number of unintentionally hilarious scenes (there is a particularly hilarious scene where Gosling is yelling at his girlfriend to take her dress off in the middle of Bangkok that almost had me in tears) are the only thing that keep we from completely losing interest. Refn really needs to shed his immense ego and craft a film with a coherent storyline without a barrage of pointless scenes and not one that simply serves as an excuse for him to use artsy quick-cut shots of every major character being brutally murdered. He is an undeniably technically skilled director, but those skills don't translate over to screenwriting in the slightest. Only God Forgives is a painfully boring and terribly written/acted disaster of a movie that has plenty of style, but practically no substance.
1.5/5 Stars
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