In Thailand, there is still a dark side and a criminal world that has not yet ended. That story began when Ryan Gosling was sent by his mother (Christine Scott Thomas) on a powerful mission to take revenge. It seems that the young man will do the job to avenge his older brother, who was killed by a killer whore by a criminal and drug trafficker.
This is one of the most shocking and one of the best movies of the year.
Newcity
April 08, 2014
Even as their shadows fall across these walls, the characters are not supermen; they're humans reduced to chiaroscuro. Characterization is even more minimal.
'Only God Forgives' is a mess, an overly stylized and brutally violent mood piece with something to alienate everyone. It's also absolutely worth seeing.
Style over substance doesn't really tell the half of it: you can bathe a corpse in groovy light and dress it in an expensive suit, but in the end that rotting smell just won't go away.
That it is superficial is a given. It's clear that Refn's plan is to drug us into transcendence, into the eerie plains of his Norse parable Valhalla Rising. He wants this film to levitate, but it doesn't.