Nicolas Winding Refn follows up his Los Angeles pulp thriller Drive with an ultraviolent far eastern crime oddity
Like his mentor, the 57-year-old enfant terrible Lars von Trier, the 42-year-old Nicolas Winding Refn is equally fascinated by extreme violence and the austere, mystical Lutheranism of Carl Dreyer, the father figure of Danish cinema and still its greatest exponent. His new film as writer-director, Only God Forgives, exhibits both these elements but is set far from Denmark in a stylised, present-day Bangkok, almost entirely at night in underpopulated, garishly neon-lit streets and dark interiors, though there's one memorable, downbeat shot of the oppressive, smog-ridden city in the early morning.
The film's central character is an American expatriate played by Ryan Gosling, who made a serious impression as a getaway driver in Refn's Los Angeles-set Drive. More recently he appeared as a sad fairground performer and criminal in Derek Cianfrance's A Place Beyond the Pines,...
Like his mentor, the 57-year-old enfant terrible Lars von Trier, the 42-year-old Nicolas Winding Refn is equally fascinated by extreme violence and the austere, mystical Lutheranism of Carl Dreyer, the father figure of Danish cinema and still its greatest exponent. His new film as writer-director, Only God Forgives, exhibits both these elements but is set far from Denmark in a stylised, present-day Bangkok, almost entirely at night in underpopulated, garishly neon-lit streets and dark interiors, though there's one memorable, downbeat shot of the oppressive, smog-ridden city in the early morning.
The film's central character is an American expatriate played by Ryan Gosling, who made a serious impression as a getaway driver in Refn's Los Angeles-set Drive. More recently he appeared as a sad fairground performer and criminal in Derek Cianfrance's A Place Beyond the Pines,...
- 8/3/2013
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
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