Movie review: Only God Forgives

MOVIE REVIEW: The last time actor Ryan Gosling and director Nicolas Winding Refn got together, the end result was Drive.

Ryan Gosling Only God Forgives

MOVIE REVIEW: The last time actor Ryan Gosling and director Nicolas Winding Refn got together, the end result was Drive.

It was a moody, brooding and brilliant deconstruction of the modern crime film.

The pair are up to the same old tricks with Only God Forgives. End result? A dull, dim-witted and lifeless dismantling of the modern crime film.

The story is a bare-bones (and severed-limb) revenge yarn set in Bangkok.

Gosling plays an American drug smuggler stoically patrolling the perimeter of a complicated blood feud.

After his sadistic brother (Tom Burke) gets what's coming to him for killing a local sex worker, the lads' equally sadistic mum (Kristin Scott Thomas) steps into the fray.

Should she get her way, there won't be a living person left in the Thai capital.

There are long periods of repose in Only God Forgives, where an impeccably inanimate Gosling works through his repertoire of screen-saver stares.

Every 10 minutes or so, Refn interrupts with a short burst of recoil, summoning violent atrocities out of thin air.

Then it's back to Gosling being very cool and very still. The dude might have a general reputation as one of the hottest actors on the planet. But here, he's just an ice sculpture with dialogue.

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ONLY GOD FORGIVES [MA]
Rating: 0.5/5
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive)
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Kristin Scott Thomas, Tom Burke
"God might make an exception here"