It's safe to say that if you didn't like Drive, you won't like Only God Forgives. Director Nicolas Winding Refn reteams with Ryan Gosling for the crime thriller, and from the looks of the red-band trailer, there will be plenty of violence. This time, though, Gosling doesn't play a sympathetic figure, but a psychopath whose abnormalities were apparent in the womb. In a voiceover, his mother (Kristin Scott Thomas) says doctors "told me to terminate," but I'm pretty sure there's no test for gun-toting psychopaths yet.
Drive had look-at-me cinematography and thrilling car chases. The color saturation in Only God Forgives looks even more over the top, with entire scenes shown in shades of bright red or deep neon blue. Refn set the feature in Bangkok, Thailand, and he's clearly drawing from the aesthetics of East Asian films. That's just one reason the movie will be a must-see among cinephiles.
What's unclear is whether Gosling's followers will appreciate the star in a movie that's not Crazy, Stupid, Love. Gosling is clearly wary of being a matinee idol, taking dark roles in films like Half Nelson, Lars and the Real Girl, Blue Valentine, The Place Beyond the Pines, Drive, and now Only God Forgives. But that doesn't mean his diehard fans wish he'd just cave and star in another movie like The Notebook. In fact, the closest they're likely to get to that is the auteur project from Terence Malick that features a love triangle set in Austin, Texas. I imagine that romance will be far less accessible than the one in The Notebook.
The Weinsten Co. is releasing Only God Forgives through their Radius banner, which emphasizes VOD and simultaneous theatrical/alternative releases. It's likely they'll roll out the feature later in 2013.
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