Only God Forgives (2013)
Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
Julian, who runs a Thai boxing club as a front organization for his family's drug smuggling operation, is forced by his mother Crystal to find and kill the individual responsible for his brother's recent death.
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What critics say influenced Only God Forgives
Provocatively suggestive and worthy of multiple viewings, "Only God Forgives" nevertheless works best as a motion picture of atmosphere and style over substance, the screen's forbidden corridors and back alleys pulsating with cinematographer Larry Smith's glowing blue- and red-tinged color palette (in addition, portentous shots of a hallway elevator and booming organs on the soundtrack are unmistakably reminiscent of 1980's " The Shining ").
Refn's camera obsesses over the red wallpaper in the brothel where Julian lives, recalling a similar focus on the carpet pattern in "The Shining."
Smith’s long association with Stanley Kubrick is acknowledged in unsettling images of hotel and sex-club corridors that appear to be an explicit nod to The Shining.
But words are superfluous to the images; Kubrick’s DP Larry Smith takes honours here, and the tracking shots of haunted hallways are reminiscent of his work on The Shining .
The filmmaker’s slow movement down ominous hallways and nightmare-like atmosphere recall “The Shining”; in many ways “Only God Forgives” is a horror story about the hideous things people say and do and the cyclical nature of revenge that would be comical if the actions weren’t so difficult to watch.
Kubrickian in its framing, odd sense of humor, and reliance on bright, primary colors, Only God Forgives is reminiscent of The Shining.
The director has dedicated the film to the avant-garde filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky (" El Topo "), whose inspiration remains superficial at best.
The film is dedicated to Alejandro Jodorowsky, whose surreal Western "El Topo" was an early midnight-movie hit; certainly with its sadistic violence and holy atonement, "Only God Forgives" could be a homage.
Indeed, Nicolas Winding Refn’s thriller has shades of Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Mulholland Dr ., and Lost Highway — but it’s the Chilean-French surrealist Alejandro Jodorowsky that Refn refers to most directly, particularly in those moments that speak to the spiritual or imply otherworldliness.
Lynchian in its violent, sexually viable weirdness, like 1986's " Blue Velvet " transported to Thailand and given an extra splash of gore, the film enthralls and, on occasion, perplexes.
Pitched somewhere between Kubrick and Lynch, Only God Forgives possesses the same formal precision of A Clockwork Orange and Eyes Wide Shut and the same what-the-hell-is-happening nightmarishness of Blue Velvet and Inland Empire.
(Julian’s symbolic return to the womb, to put it gently, apes the key gesture of David Cronenberg’s “Videodrome.”)
The myriad of metaphors, particularly those featuring various forms of 'penetration' that echo David Cronenberg's Videodrome, favour a reading of the movie as a modern-day retelling of the Oedipus Rex tragedy.
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Indeed, Nicolas Winding Refn’s thriller has shades of Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Mulholland Dr ., and Lost Highway — but it’s the Chilean-French surrealist Alejandro Jodorowsky that Refn refers to most directly, particularly in those moments that speak to the spiritual or imply otherworldliness.
Indeed, Only God Forgives often plays like the opening of Lost Highway as filtered through a sexless Eyes Wide Shut.
"Only God Forgives" offers us unapologetically despicable people swallowed up into Beth Mickle's otherworldly set designs accompanied by composer Cliff Martinez's throbbing, lushly symphonic music that appears to pay fitting tribute to the score from the 1980s release "Shogun Assassin."
Cinematographer Larry Smith, who worked with Stanley Kubrick on lighting Barry Lyndon, The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut (check out the sex-club scenes), gives the film a toxic allure.
The film may look like a grungy In the Mood for Love (2000) or Eyes Wide Shut (1999), even if it owes more to Kill Bill (2003) and Death Wish (1974).
Cinematographer Larry Smith, who shot Refn’s 2003 Lynchian misfire, “Fear X,” “Bronson” and Stanley Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut,” pushes the red in both light and dark settings for this supposedly colorblind director.
Working with veteran British cinematography Larry Smith ( Stanley Kubrick 's "Eyes Wide Shut"), Refn is so precise in framing the shots that a moment as simple as Julian walking through a doorway becomes a rite of passage.
Indeed, Only God Forgives often plays like the opening of Lost Highway as filtered through a sexless Eyes Wide Shut.
But Eyes Wide Shut thought it was depicting New York, if you recall.
Peter Greenaway's The Pillow Book was in a similar vein.
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An obvious touchstone is Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1967 “Le samouraï,” a genre gangster film that was also, elegantly, an illustration of the chambers of a schizophrenic mind.
Scott Thomas has never had a role quite like this to sink her teeth into before, and the typically even-keeled star relishes the opportunity to play such an arch matriarch (though she’s no match for Jacki Weaver’s cunningly manipulative mama bear in “Animal Kingdom”).
Easily one of the nastiest matriarchs in cinema history, Crystal is as ruthless as Jacki Weaver's Mama Smurf in Animal Kingdom , and as imperious as Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest , but way nastier than either.
What’s more, once the initial jolt has worn off, Crystal isn’t nearly as interesting as, say, Jacki Weaver’s character in “ Animal Kingdom ,” a criminal den-mother of fascinating contradictions.
In a mad turn of casting against type, Scott Thomas electrifies, trash talking with a broad American accent in the kind of mean matriarch role that delivered Jacki Weaver an Oscar nomination for "Animal Kingdom."