Earlier today it was announced that the team behind “Drive,” director Nicolas Winding Refn and star Ryan Gosling, would have their new opus “Only God Forgives” play in competition at this year's Cannes Film Festival. That in and of itself is pretty boss, but even bosser (go with it) are a pair of new trailers for the film, which promise all the style, bloodshed, and dark humor that we've come to expect from a Refn/Gosling team-up. (It should be noted that both trailers feature an excessive amount of bloodshed and at least one use of the F-word, so we'll go ahead and classify these as NSFW.)
Both trailers give a similar rundown of the plot -- Gosling is a criminal in Bangkok whose brother has been murdered. The boys' mother, played with relish by Kristen Scott Thomas, makes the trip to Bangkok to egg on Gosling to avenge his brother's death. This, of course, involves taking on a corrupt police official and getting involved in an underground boxing ring. From the basic plot synopsis it goes into an almost epileptic series of shots from the movie, all of them gorgeously photographed and neon-lined -- the heightened stylization of “Drive” taken to an absurd level.
Back when Refn was promoting “Bronson,” his real life biopic of Britain's most violent prisoner (which starred a then-unknown Tom Hardy), I asked him about “Only God Forgives.” He said something about how, at first, it's a little bit violent, and then it gets really violent. From the looks of the trailer, he's followed through on his word.
It'll be interesting to see if the film makes the same waves at Cannes that “Drive” did a few years ago. The rest of us have to wait until July 19th.
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