My my, what a cool film Refn delivered again. Julian is an American criminal living in Bangkok and together with his brother Billy runs drug traffic under supervision of his mother living in America. His brother proves to be a dirty bastard and gets killed. Since ‘only God forgives’ Julian and his mother set out for revenge, but each in their own way. They underestimate their opponent though.
“Only God Forgives” is a much like Refn’s previous film “Drive“. The main character is the same. The approach is the same, meaning that “Only God Forgives” is again minimalistic and extremely slow, but still a thriller, an action-thriller even. The camera work is great and there are more Lynch-like dark scenes in this latest film. Also again we have a few very violent outbursts. Yep, there are many things that “Drive” and “Only God Forgives” have incommon. The newest film is a little less predictable story-wise, has an equally good score, but (of course) less originality. Still I think that both will remain some of my favourite films for a while to come.
