If Drive were the only film by Nicolas Winding Refn you have seen, you might approach his follow-up, Only God Forgives, with the expectations of it being just like that Ryan Gosling vehicle. While that’s understandable, it’s also wrong.

While Gosling, neon and brutal violence all return from that 2011 instant crime classic to front this Bangkok-set crime drama, the similarities end there. Gosling’s soft-spoken Julian may be a drug smuggler, but he’s a saint compared to his brother, Billy (Tom Burke, Donkey Punch), who is murdered after raping and killing a 16-year-old prostitute.

Flying in from America upon hearing the news is the cold-hearted Crystal (a frighteningly good Kristin Scott Thomas, Gosford Park), their tigress of a mother coming to avenge her fallen cub. (Her character’s animal-print dress can’t be accidental.) Her consideration of Julian as the inferior child is not an opinion she hides — rather, she revels in it — yet Crystal still counts on him to bring down those men responsible for Billy’s bloody end — namely, Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm, The Hangover Part II) the corrupt cop who travels with a very sharp sword he’s not afraid to use.

Using all the fluorescent colors in the Crayola box, Refn is in no rush to draw his tale of good vs. evil; characters often move at literal half-speed. By design, the story is rather simplistic — the moral code of the 12th-century samurai basted in a contemporary dressing. With Refn, what’s most important is not the depth of the tale but how it’s told, and Only God Forgives more resembles David Lynch than Drive. To that end, its calculated visuals can lull the viewer into a trance of sublimity. I get why so many will hate it; I’m just grateful I’m not one of them. —Rod Lott

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