Only God Forgives is now streaming on Netflix. Here’s my review from TheSplitScreen from July.
by Matt Smith
The Bangkok of Only God Forgives is a typically cinematic one, replete with whorehouses, karaoke lounges and Muay Thai boxing. The exotic exploitation of the locale and overt orientalism on display is, in other words, exactly what we might expect from a foreigner shooting a film there. And for whatever reason, it never seems outright exploitive other than the fact that the film is about just that. With a half-thought-out thesis about the value of life in Bangkok, a city of skin trades seemingly by default, and the many reasons Westerners are so fascinated by the place, Refn fully indulges in the cinematic tropes and visions that have haunted visitors to the East (and certainly the films made about the East by filmmakers in the West).
Sure, we could all sit around and think about the film as a meaningless expose of nothing at all. As a…
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Matt Boyd Smith 