The trailer was so great and the movie sucked! Just a waste of time.
I thought the movie was fantastic. Action is supposed to make you feel tense and on the edge. The music combined with the cinematography kept me engaged with a fast beating heart. What I like about the film is that it accomplished this while having the action move slow and steady. Very romanticized film and a risk taken by the creators that paid off. 7.3/10
Terrible movie. I lost one and a half hours of my life watching it, and wondering what was going on.
I was so looking forward for this one and I'm disappointed.
It's so slow paced and I am a person that don't mind slow but at least the film has a good storytelling to keep me interested and I was getting so bored. It's sad. The story isn't bad but the things that are about to happen we have to wait for so long for them that you start to loose the interest.
Ryan Gosling has probably 5 or 6 lines during the whole film and I guess he never changes his facial expression. He had a similar character in Driver but this was to much! I loved him in Driver and I hated him in this.
The best things of this film are Kristin Scott Thomas performance and the way the film is shot, so gorgeous.
This might be an artwork but just in the way it was shooted I can't like anything more and all of my rating goes mostly for that.
Enjoyable if you like watching Gosling stare off into space.
It has all the ingredients that I'd usually love in a film, but the pacing lets it down for me.
'Only God Forgives' is pretty dark and strikingly gory, with the stylish cinematography really shining through to set the right tone. Ryan Gosling, meanwhile, is good in a role which is similar to his one in 2011's 'Drive', which was also directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Kristin Scott Thomas is solid, though I couldn't get away from the thought that her character was made to be portrayed by Toni Collette. Vithaya Pansringarm plays it cool as his character.
All in all, I enjoyed it. I just didn't love it. It's a little too stop/start for my liking, as in it felt like I was watching a series of events as opposed to a fully fleshed out plot; I don't mean that the scenes feel unconnected, it just feels like every scene is too much its own thing in terms of storytelling.
What a bunch of unwatchable bs
This movie cannot be watched as a typical hollywood action film. It's more about human emotions and revenge. Yes it's slow, but it's like that on purpose.
I really liked this movie. Similar to TRON: Legacy, I view it more as a work of art rather than focusing on the plot. The music and lighting just visually appeal to me and it has left me with a lasting impression.
loved this, really well directed, very stylish, great soundtrack
Excellent cant understand the negative reviews ..a lot was stolen from David Lynch...would have been blatant if there was a close up of Kristen Scott Thomas lighting a cigarette..Kristen was amazing..Good Story...Blade Runner Cinematography - Drive feel - Lynch atmosphere - and a cliff Martinez soundtrack, whats not to love
I just watched #OnlyGodForgives for the first time, and I went to @Letterboxd, and I knew it. 5 Stars from all the NWR fanboys. Sure it looks great, it’s gory and violent, the film has style for days, but it left me feeling hollow. Yes, I get the underling themes, god + devil…
This movie was actually so weird and borderline bad I had to make a review for it. While there are some genuinely good scenes (especially towards the end), most of it was just way too slow. I understand wanting to make it seem dramatic but the slow paced scenes are only good and worthwhile when it is backed up by normal paced scenes. For example, chocolate is good--but you only know it's good when you haven't had a lot of it. If you ate a gallon of chocolate then you would most likely feel sick and not like it. Or water. If you had a bunch of water you would be sick of it, but if you had water after the gallon of chocolate the water would feel like it was blessed from the heavens. The few scenes that were normally paced and not a character staring off into the distance for 30 seconds felt like water from the heavens.
Aside from the slow pacing of it the violence was good. It seemed like they put enough of the budget into making the violence seem realistic which I could appreciate. I also find the relationship between [Julian and Mai to be weird] but maybe I just don't understand the movie that well. And finally, the acting was good (I suppose). It wasn't horrible but it's not something super memorable.
An hour and a half of indifferent faces, strange decisions, blood revenge and blood itself.
Lynchian in world and execution, this stylised fable is both distubing and mesmerising. Kristin Scott Thomas should play this dark more often.
This has to be one of the most overrated movies I have ever seen. I always saw on social media posts about how good this movie is but watching it had to be one of the most miserable things I have ever done. It’s literally just a bunch of nonesense. Don’t waste your time.
The trailer is actually excellent. So the movie actually could have been good. If it made as much sense as the trailer does and wasn’t a hollow and ugly film.
Gosling is just there to look pretty and watch girls masturbate with a blank look on his face. Plus the film could have used more of a revenge plot to root for. Gosling’s mom is making him avenge the death of his sleaze ball rapist brother who murdered underage girls.
As soon as we meet his brother and he asked for a 14 yr old or the pimps daughter if possible, I wanted him dead.
Drive with a Kill Bill feel had potential. Drive with no interesting plot and no likable characters is a snooze fest. I had no clue who to root for.
"Only God Forgives" is the ultimate example that the most personal and uncompromising work of a filmmaker is not always his best. Unlike most people have been saying, this film shares many common traits with Refn's most famous work "Drive": a stylized plot to allow complete focus on the aesthetics and atmosphere, characters who stay quiet and let the images talk instead, emphasis on the city and its urban landscapes, a silent hero with an ambiguous ethical code, twisted violence used as some kind of artistic fetish, men seeking for redemption as they keep fighting forces that are far greater than themselves. So why didn't the formula work this time?
"Only God Forgives" sees Refn rowing against the current at all costs and dropping all intent to please his audience, as if he was asked to prove his artistic integrity after having achieved mainstream success. I guess people didn't like that Ryan Gosling this time impersonates a pathetic loser with rotten feelings, continuously manipulated by his deranged and vengeful mother. Honestly, that was actually the only interesting thing I could find in the whole movie. Despite Gosling's bloated performance, his character brings with him the existentialist and introspective nature of this film. It's the key to decipher all symbols and visual nonsense. His mother Crystal is perfectly portrayed by Kristin Scott Thomas, but her character ends up being overly stylized and cartoonish, a little more than a swearing machine with boobs. Crystal's opponent Chang is a cruel executioner that resembles the God from the Old Testament, able to forgive those who violate his principles but not without proper punishment. He connects well with the mystical, alienating atmosphere that permeates the film, but I couldn't stop laughing every time he was swirling his machete around.
It felt just like one more pretentious, self-indulgent film that will definitely stay in my mind for decades, but that due to the naive and careless writing failed to communicate anything more than formal beauty.
Artistic douchebaggery is an often overused term, but it really applies to Only God Forgives. It puts style over substance, and is full of color tinting and symbolic imagery. So much attention is paid to the visual style that the plot is almost forgotten, or is at least secondary. What story there is follows a mother who comes to Bangkok to avenge the murder of her eldest son, meanwhile her other son struggles with his loyalty to his family and his sense of justice. Ryan Gosling and Kristin Scott Thomas lead the cast, but their performances are extremely underwhelming. Only God Forgives is a poorly crafted film where nothing works.
So, I saw Only God Forgives and it was really disappointing. Now, I didn't have huge expectations going into it in the first place, and it's not like there were no redeeming qualities to this movie whatsoever, and it's not like there were no redeeming qualities to this movie whatsoever,but it is definitely not something that I would recommend.
Now, there are plenty of great movies out there that have minimal action scenes and slow pacing, but when it works it's usually because the audience members have something to digest when they're watching it. In Only God Forgives the story is not only ridiculously simple but kind of irrelevant. The movie obviously knows when it's most marketable scenes are, because those scenes were in the trailer. When people get excited by all those short clips in a trailer, they're mostly excited by the promise that those scenes will actually be held together by something.they're mostly excited by the promise that those scenes will actually be held together by something.
Watching two characters fighting is not nearly as entertaining as watching two characters you actually understand and care about, fighting. During many of the scenes in this movie I found myself thinking that they would be better scenes if they were simply in a different movie. One with, maybe, some context! Long, drawn-out scenes of silent actors' faces might be compelling if there was some glue holding them together. But I felt like there was no story progressing in between at all. It was all icing and no cake. The film was visually interesting, despite it being visually repetitive. But most of it is what I would like to call pretentious.
I don't much like this movie. I really prefer his director previous film, Drive. Only it saves the cinematography and the music.
Omg, so slow movie, all characters are like zombies, watched till end but always was pushing forward jumps in very boring places. And this movie sucks, no proper story line. IMO this movie is for drug addicts. even if you are Ryan Gosling fan, i dont recomend to watch this.
Better once I thought of it in two ways:
As an old Western set in the East (along the lines of "The Searchers", a whole movie about vengeance)
As an almost academic cinema study in building visceral tension
Quite successful in those narrowly defined ways. Not a very involving narrative otherwise.
Estetic... Photography... Camera... Cast... Not anymore...
Dear god, what a crapfest. I gave it a 5 because of the way it was shot. The visuals are great but the story and pace .........
more like only god sleeps, amirite
anyway, i felt as if ryan gosling was only there to look pretty along with every other women that showed up, what a waste.
"Billy Raped and Killed a 16 year old girl."
"I'm sure he had his reasons."
Wtf.
I didn't understand the ending I don't even know if I understand the story correctly
very poor . am a big fan of DRIVE but this one is terrible
Pretty weird movie, starts off very slow...
Great visuals, weird movie. .
Great camera, poor storyline! If you're not a film fanatic, try to avoid this film. You'll get frustrated by the slow pace of this film!
Shout by tomquadratBlockedParent2013-07-28T22:22:14Z
horrible. like watching a pretentious pop video in slow motion.