Only God Forgives (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2013)

On this evidence, Winding Refn has got overenamoured with his own style. Only God Forgives looks amazing, cuts sharply and makes great use of its soundtrack. It also has no substance at all.
Ryan Gosling, this time a drug dealer in Thailand, cannot be left to coast along just on the strength of his puppy-dog sad expression. Nor can every scene be supersaturated with colour. Winding Refn has committed this sin before, with his conviction that Mads Mikkelsen's face alone could carry Valhalla Rising, but at least there you felt an inkling of empathy for the characters. There is the same doomy background drone and horrific violence but no sense that any of it matters. Swords are fetishised and dream fugues abused to serve the cool shot, and that only. This is a director who badly needs to be shown how to reconnect with mankind.

4/10