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)
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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.