Hello this is jake winters for eye on the triangle this is snowverated and this week I will be taking a look at the film Only god forgives.

This week I decided to take a look at a somewhat controversial film. It seems that people will either like it or hate it. It is pretty easy to see why too. The style is out of the ordinary and the pace of the film is extremely slow. With that being said I found a lot to like in the movie.

The movie was released in July of 2013 us and when it first came out it received the mixed reviews that still hang around the movie. The movies odd style is what mostly divides the opinions on the film and the excess violence can only add to that. The film doesn’t shy away from taboo and asks questions about what justice means to those who have stepped outside of the law. When dealing with such immoral principles a film will always have a divided audience.

The movie goes straight into the thick of the plot. There is no introduction and before we know it characters are dieing. This is odd as the rest of the film moves so slowly. The viewer is abruptly brought into the world and then slowly introduced to many of its intricacies. The characters may not necessarily develop through the story as their principles seem to stay the same from the start but the main character, played by ryan gosling, is a changed man to many around him. How he acts is unpredictable to them. The search for retribution in the movie is relentless. Every side seeking to redeem another fallen companion. You find yourself with no one to root for and become so entangled in trying to figure out why people even are doing the horrible things that they are.

The pace of the movie is beyond the norm for most movies. As I said before there is only a minor introduction to the story which leaves you trying to sort out the details of the plot while it still continues but immediately after being thrown in the scenes slow down. Every moment takes its time and I was glad they did because of how beautiful the movie is. Every frame is something to study. Each scene has elaborate decorations that I couldn’t help but wonder how long it took the design team to finish each set. The weird part about how slow the movie felt was how short it ends up being in total. The movie is only an hour and a half long and it felt like at least a 2 hour movie. They fit an impressive amount of story into that short hour and a half.

The majority of the film is only music and video. There is not a lot of talking done by the characters. It adds a feeling of being in between talking all the time that adds to the already slow filming of the movie. You are anticipating the next dialogue and the intensity of it never disappoints. The acting has to be superb for this to work because you get so much story from facial expressions. The emotion of every face has to be clear.

This story and style is hard to pull off. The topic is polarizing and the way in which it is portrayed is certainly unusual. The man that directed this film, Nicolas Winding Refn, also directed the film Bronson which I reviewed last year. I really did not like that film and I can see many similarities between the two. Bronson moves slow like Only God Forgives does but it doesn’t build story like Only God forgives does. It lacks the clarity to do so and I think that only god forgives is a done far better. The fact that there is so much similarity in style between Bronson and Only god forgives and I like one and really dislike the other shows how on point a film has to be to do this style of film correctly.

I am going to give this movie 8.5/10. The visuals were amazing, the acting was on point, and it told a compelling story of betrayal, family, and justice. The two things that I felt could have been better and what keeps me from giving this movie a higher score is having a more relatable plot, which is a weak criticism at best, and the pace of the story was well done but could have been sped up at many points.

This movie is currently on amazon for free so I highly recommend you give it a chance. It definitely isn’t for everyone but for those that do like it, it is fantastic. Thank you for listening to this weeks edition of eye on the triangle and snowverated. Have a good night.