After debuting at the recent Cannes Film Festival, Nicolas Winding Refn‘s crime drama Only God Forgives has divided critics. Some love it. Some hate it – and that’s putting it politely.

We won’t get to decide which side of the fence we’re on until 1 August. But in the meantime, we can enjoy a new trailer and some shiny neon posters.

Refn re-teams with his Drive star Ryan Gosling who plays Julian, an exile and owner of a Bangkok Thai Boxing gym used as a front for his family’s drug business. When a retired police lieutenant (Vithaya Pansringarm), known as ‘The Angel of Vengeance’, murders his brother, Julian is forced by his crime boss mum mother (Kristen Scott Thomas) to seek revenge – bloody, stylish, neon-lit revenge.

Plenty of new footage here, although most of it simply sets up the relationship between Julian and his mother.

I can see why people don’t like the over-stylised look but heck, Drive was the same way and I loved that – so I reckon I’m gonna love this.

Some critics have complained it’s overly violent, but after films like Django Unchained and The Raid just how violent could it possibly be? And I think the fight between Gosling and Pansringarm is gonna be worth the price of admission alone – they only tease it here but it still sends goosebumps up my spine. “Wanna fight?”

You looking forward to Only God Forgives?

New posters: (Note: they show the US release date)

Only God Forgives Neon Poster 1

Only God Forgives Neon Poster 2

Only God Forgives Neon Poster 3

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Julian (Gosling) lives in exile in Bangkok where he runs a Thai boxing club as a front for the family’s drugs smuggling operation. When Julian’s brother Billy is killed their mother, Jenna (Scott Thomas), arrives in the city. She wants revenge and forces Julian to find the killer. Julian’s contacts in the criminal underworld lead him directly to The Angel of Vengeance, a retired police officer who knows everything and who is both Judge and Punisher. Jenna demands that Julian kill The Angel of Vengeance, an act that will cost him dearly.

Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, the film stars Ryan Gosling, Kristen Scott Thomas, Tom Burke, Yayaying, Sahajak Boonthanakit, and Vithaya Pansringarm.

Only God Forgives opens 1 August, 2013.