Dallas Buyers Club

A Partially Educated Review of Dallas Buyers Club

In which the McConaissance is proven to be more than just a flash in the pan

If, three years ago, you had presented me with a film that stars Matthew McConaughey, Jared Leto and Jennifer Garner, you'd have probably witnessed my sanity consciously uncouple from the rest of me. To be honest, I still balk at anything which involves the walking God complex that is Mr Leto. It's an issue that can be traced all the way back to a traumatic event in my life that occurred at Manchester Central on the 4th of December, 2010: the day I saw 30 Seconds To Mars live.

All jokes and mental scars aside, I can, in all honesty, say that I went into Dallas Buyers Club with an open mind. Of course, the hype helped, but so too did the facts that I both wanted to see the film and that McConaughey already won me over a few years ago with The Lincoln Lawyer. Also, bar Garner's two turns as Electric Nachos, I can't think of anything she's done of particular disgrace. Leto was the hardest one to clear my mind on, but that was just something I needed to get over. It didn't take long though, because he is every bit as good as the multitude of awards that he was won would suggest. In fact, all three of them are and there's a reason why the performances have been the primary focus of any and all reviews. It's because they are, by far, the film's strongest asset.

As far as McConaughey is concerned, I struggled to see how anyone could have warranted Best Actor awards over Chiwetel Ejiofor in 12 Years A Slave, but reserved judgment until seeing Dallas Buyers Club. While I don't necessarily think McConaughey's performance is better than Ejiofor's, I have no desire to start comparing them in an attempt to prove whose was better. It just seems a bit pointless when they're both as good as this. Throughout the course of the film, Ron Woodroof goes through a much bigger character change than any of the others. He's the main character, so that's to be expected, but McConaughey is able to seamlessly transition from bravado one moment to breaking point the next, nailing every stage and fluctuation between them.

For Leto, there's a subtlety that he creates within his performance that only runs at odds with the appearance of his character because it needs to. Without it, the performance would have become more about Leto portraying a transsexual, but instead he has (rightfully) focussed on portraying a human being. Rayon is the film's voice of reason, instilling the bits of humanity in McConaughey that the contraction of HIV hasn't managed to. In addition, any pathos that the film provides comes mostly as a result of Leto's character, but this is not done in an overly manipulative way. Instead, it's achieved through the very human way in which the film is laid out. There's no sweeping score here to tell you how to feel because it isn't required.

Finally though, we have Jennifer Garner, someone who I've made particular note of mentioning because the quality of her two co-stars' performances has left her to be a bit of a side note when it comes to praise. This is the best role I have ever seen her in. You may snort and point out that the competition for her performances isn't exactly strong, but I don't mean this praise in a "most improved" kind of way. I mean it in a "bloody good job" kind of way. Her character isn't as fleshed out as the other two, but this doesn't stop her and, for the first time in (I think) ever, she completely held my attention beyond simple competency.

The only problem with the performances is that they are better than the film they are in. I don't mean that as if to say that Dallas Buyers Club is a bad film. It isn't. It is a very good film; at times, excellent. It has two problems though. The first is that it's never surprising. I'm not suggesting they should have taken liberties with the story, but there is nothing within this that will leap out at you or surprise you. The second issue is that it seems to think it's message is a lot more revolutionary than it actually is. The transgressions committed and ignorance shown towards people with HIV and AIDS was awful and not something that I am going to pretend to even have half of the knowledge about that others will. That said, it doesn't take an extensive knowledge to know that treatment of the disease has improved greatly and we are now leaps and bounds beyond the level that we were at 30 years ago. In condemning past errors, any comment on where we are at with the disease today seems missing and, as a result, the film feels more like an historical document than anything else. Certainly, the film's portrayal of homosexuality and the intolerance around it ring truer to today, but it's comments on HIV feel firmly rooted in the 80's and 90's.

Despite this, Dallas Buyer Club is still a great film, just one that is designed for performances. In pushing these to the front and keeping them as the focus, it's putting his strongest hand out there for everyone to see. McConaughey's past has been forgiven a long time ago. I'm also interested to see if Jennifer Garner can capitalise on her successes here. Finally though, while I may not be quite able to forget the 4th of December, 2010, I might be warming to Jared Leto.

Emphasis on the MIGHT!

FOUR out of five

This Is The End

A Partially Educated Review of This Is The End

In which the prospect of Seth Rogen and friends dying is apparently enough to make them funny again

To say that things have been going a bit stale for Seth Rogen and his friends as of late isn't too far off the mark. Though it didn't take long for the cracks to start showing, it seems like The Green Hornet signalled the true downward slide for Rogen and, while there's been the odd highlight (50/50), it's all started to get a little bit annoying. So, on that basis, a film which mostly comprises of Seth Rogen and his friends playing themselves whilst trapped inside a house could very well have ended up unbearable. It isn't.

While the end of the world plot device does provide a number of the film's gags, the focus instead is on sending themselves up as characters, taking the perceived notions of how they would be based on their career paths and using this to provide the laughs. While Jay Baruchel serves as the hipster loner that hasn't had as much success as the others, Danny McBride is selfish, irritating and slightly evil, managing the incredibly difficult task of being annoying, but using that to create humour rather than just irritation. This, of course, begs the question of why McBride can't do that in all of his other films. 

The best comedy, however, comes from the triumvirate that is James Franco, Jonah Hill and Craig Robinson. Franco and Hill both latch on to their successes outside of comedy with Franco falling head-long into pretension. Hill, meanwhile, is trying to avoid this, but failing miserably. As he takes a moment to pray, he makes sure that God realises he is "Jonah Hill from Moneyball". Robinson, on the other hand, plays the same character he plays in everything else, but, much like McBride, has somehow found a way to make it funny. He comes out as the most likeable by far, serving as the biggest peacekeeper in the house, but avoiding the whininess this could cause. While many of the film's highlights come from the actor's video testimonials, Robinson's is of particular note.

Strange then that Seth Rogen doesn't achieve the same quality, despite the fact that he's one of the writers. It could have gone far better than it does, as an early send-up of the "Seth Rogen laugh" suggests that he's going to try something a bit different, but he really hasn't. Instead, he falls back into the same character that Rogen always plays. It may be that the character is how he is in real life, but bar one notable moment (also on a video testimonial), I can't remember any of the other points where he actually made me laugh. I'm fairly certain that's because he didn't.

He does, however, fare better in his other role as co-director with Evan Goldberg. The end of the world plot could leave this open for set-piece after set-piece, going for the easy laughs with the character's reactions. While there are some of these and, to be fair, they mostly work, the film is at it's best and funniest when the characters are allowed to just be themselves within the confines of the house. As a result, (and without giving anything away) the ending marks a slight drop in the laugh count with the very last scenes lacking the final laughs that the film deserved. In addition, the ending hosts a notable cameo that's good for nostalgia, but still feels a little cheap. This is a shame as the abundance of cameos throughout the rest of the film are all handled really well and provide genuine laughs, with top prizes going to Michael Cera and Danny McBride's, shall we say, "companion".

There was always the risk that this was going to be a vanity project. To be fair, it is a vanity project, but it's one that has the decency to be funny with it. It's not just some well-established comedy actors laughing at how funny they are, but instead them lamenting about how annoying they've all got and leaving us to do the laughing on their behalf. When you take into account that last year's other source of multiple comic actors coming together in the name of film was Grown Ups 2, This Is The End feels like a masterpiece.

FOUR out of five

Pain & Gain

A Partially Educated Review of Pain & Gain

In which Michael Bay manages to make me feel more uncomfortable than I did whilst watching Pearl Harbo(u)r

Before I begin, I feel it is necessary for me to state my stance on the films of Michael Bay. In general, I don't like them, but for me to claim that he is incapable of making a decent film would be a lie as there are a couple of instances where he was successful, namely The Rock (which many agree with me on) and The Island (which no one agrees with me on). Now that's said and I have clarified that I am perfectly open to the possibility of Michael Bay creating a decent film, let's move on to Pain & Gain.

There are some out there who have really been rubbed up the wrong way by this film, to the point where Mark Kermode even called it "a vile, loathsome, nasty, stupid and, let's be honest about this, slightly evil movie". While this may say a hell of a lot about my own sense of morbid curiosity, all that anger just made me want to watch it more, mainly to see whether or not this film actually is as horrific as some say it is. For me, it's certainly uncomfortable viewing. On that note, it's also fairly boring, relying on the same sort of shock tactics you'd expect from the Saw or Human Centipede films (although not quite to the level of gore) in order to create the sort of reactionary responses that they would class as success. My main criticism though isn't that I'm convinced the film is evil. It's that I'm positive it's deluded. Everything that this film does wrong is something it's convinced it's done right.

A mentality is stated early on when an opening voiceover states that the film is a true story, unfortunately. While this would serve as preparation for the fact that what you are about to watch isn't going to be easy viewing, you wouldn't necessarily suspect that they're going to take the true story of these deeply horrible and unsettling crimes and turn them into a black comedy. Worse still, you wouldn't expect a lot of the comedy to come at the expense of one of the victims, but it does, namely Tony Shalhoub as Victor Kershaw. He's not the nicest of characters and, at times, he's downright odious. That, in itself, isn't an issue. Crimes don't only happen to nice people. However, once he becomes the victim of kidnap, blackmail and eventually torture, it still feels like he's designed to be ridiculed not just by the members of the gang, but also by the audience. This is where the real problems start.

Black comedy is a dangerous territory. Get it right and you can carve out some real satirical bite. Get it wrong and you become Frankie Boyle, pushing all the wrong buttons, but failing to justify why. Pain & Gain falls into the latter camp. The three members of the gang are meatheads, pure and simple. They're not portrayed as though you should be admiring them, but the way in which they are played feels more like a Three Stooges sketch than it does a real portrayal of the contemptuous wastes of human flesh that they are. If you've seen the Three Murderers sketch in South Park, you won't be hard pushed to see the similarities here. The difference is that South Park's funny and Pain & Gain isn't. Why? Because, once again, you sit there realising that this all actually happened and any uncomfortable feelings in your stomach will stem from revulsion.

In the end, blame is spread moderately evenly. Writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely are responsible for the bad jokes and the dodgy tone. Michael Bay is responsible for taking that tone from dodgy to worrying, littering the most horrific scenes with music designed to lighten the mood. He also continues his war against the remotest signs of female character development. While all the female roles are underwritten, Bay frames them as little more than supple breasts and nice arses. Misogyny, thy name is Bay!

Mark Wahlberg also holds some of the blame, his performance taking on the sort of unhinged lack of restraint that gives you a headache. Someone needed to tell him that less is more, but that's probably a big ask considering the director. To be fair to the other actors, he's the worst by a distance. Most are competent and Dwayne Johnson is actually pretty good. It's not a performance that you'll take much pleasure in watching, but it does at least feel like an accurate one.

All in all, Pain & Gain isn't good and while I wouldn't go as far as to join the Evil Parade, it's still not exactly pleasant. What saves it from complete drudgery is some decent performances and one very important element that I would be remiss to ignore: I wanted to see how it ended, less because I was enjoying it, but more because I was interested in seeing the real-life fates of these characters. If it's not quite all pain and no gain, it is still mostly the former.

TWO out of five

G.I. Joe: Retaliation

A Partially Educated Review of G.I. Joe: Retaliation

In which the original few asked for, gets a sequel that even less people asked for.

When Sienna Miller declines to appear in your film, alarms bells must surely start ringing, but when the majority of the people who willingly signed up for G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra decline to reprise their roles, you would have to be an idiot to realise that continuing to make that film is a good idea. It would appear then that Jon M. Chu is an idiot.

To be fair, there's a smattering of unambitious sense in making a sequel to The Rise Of Cobra, as you're following a bona fide hack job that it would be incredibly hard to make anything worse than. …Cobra was legitimately devoid of anything approaching decency and also managed to look far cheaper than a $175 million budget should ever allow a film to look. While G.I. Joe: Retaliation is better than it's predecessor, it's in the exact same way that diarrhoea is better than dysentery.

Low intelligence isn't something you can throw as an insult at Retaliation. It's like criticising porn for lacking subtlety. The thing is, switching your brain off only works if the film is actually any fun and Retaliation is just one long infliction of narcoleptic drudgery upon the viewer. Any scenes with the remotest (emphasised) element to fun in them are done within the first 10 minutes, awkwardly and blatantly placed in to try and give the characters some humanity. The problem with this is that as soon as the proverbial hits the fan, they instantly go back into "dull hero" mode. Dwayne Johnson (or The Rock if you would prefer, and I do!) has seemingly forgotten how to act. You may scoff at the notion that he ever learnt, but that would be a little unfair. Johnson has got better as time has gone along, but in Retaliation, he's Scorpion-King-bad.

Fortunately for him, he's far from the worst thing about it. I know you're expecting Bruce Willis' name to appear here, but the guy's engaging in his favourite pastime of cashing a cheque and nothing more. For once, it appears he knows how awful he is. Honourable mention must also go to Ray Stevenson, who comes close to taking the crown with his turn as Firefly. Setting his face to mean, Stevenson adopts an accent that has never existed in the existence of ever. An accent so bad it's almost enough to serve as a recommendation of the film.

Almost.

The champion though is RZA in his brief, but laughably memorable turn as the mysterious figure known only as Blind Master. We know he's mysterious, because RZA puts on his mysterious voice, but he's making Byung-hun Lee look phenomenal and Byung-hun Lee is every bit as wooden as he was in the first one.

Speaking of which, I know we shouldn't be embracing reality and sense too much with the G.I. Joe series, but am I wrong, or do I distinctly remember Lee's Storm Shadow dying at the end of the first one? Instead of coming up with some ridiculous reason that would negate that death, the script seems to ignore it in the hope that we've forgotten. Sadly, the mental scars that film inflicted upon me appear permanent. It's not the only problem with the script. The whole thing feels so resoundingly lazy. The assumed identity villain role gives Jonathan Pryce far more to do than he had in the first, but it doesn't really add any sense of intrigue or unpredictability because you'll know where it's all headed and there's an expected, but still worrying, abundance of box-ticking going on.

The worst of it's problems though is simple. It very often seems as though the makers of this film had no idea what they were doing. One of the biggest action set-pieces involves some of the most inept ninjas you have ever seen. It's funny, but I'm not convinced they intended it to be so. It also marks the return of the first film's predilection for dodgy CGI. Elsewhere, proceedings are predictable in the extreme and, besides Stevenson's accent, there is nothing that you won't have seen before. In being better than The Rise Of Cobra, G.I. Joe: Retaliation shows just how bad that film really was.

ONE out of five

The Heat

 A Partially Educated Review of The Heat

In which Sandra Bullock stars in a decent comedy and yet we are not in a parallel universe

Winning the Oscar for Best Actress can often be a curse. Natalie Portman followed her win with No Strings Attached and Your Highness. Halle Berry embarked on an odyssey of crap with Gothika, Catwoman and Perfect Stranger. Hilary Swank won twice, but has hardly capitalised on it and then there's Reese Witherspoon who, well, continued doing what Reese Witherspoon always does. Some irony then, that one of the people who has managed to survive is Sandra Bullock, who, prior to her win for The Blind Side, wasn't exactly known for the quality of her past work. While she may be getting most of her recent attention as a result of Gravity, she's also managed to transition back into comedy with The Heat. The miracle is that she's managed to find a genuinely decent one.

Bullock plays by-the-book FBI agent Sarah Ashburn, currently investigating mysterious drug kingpin Simon Larkin. Her investigation leads her to cross paths with Shannon Mullins (Melissa McCarthy), who is anything but by-the-book. With both wanting to try and get the arrest of Larkin on their records, they find themselves having to help each other, leading to what is officially the fifteen millionth pairing of at-odds police officers in cinematic history. So, the plot's not really anything new, but this doesn't need to be a concern if the jokes are funny and, for the most part, they are.

A common, and often valid, complaint with modern comedies is that they're too long, commonly referred to as "Judd Apatow syndrome" or "James Boothman reviews syndrome". It's become even more of a problem in the last few years with comedies averaging nearer 2 hours, when a lot could do with a good half hour shaving from that (if not more). Another problem, specific to buddy cop comedies, is that all the funny bits come from conflict between the two of them, meaning that if or when that conflict disappears, so too do the competent jokes. It has to be said that The Heat comes as close to avoiding both of those hazards as you could hope. Ashburn and Mullins are oddities and this is used to emphasise the comedy. Any bonds they form aren't through a mentality of there being anything wrong with being an oddity, but instead through a mutual respect for each other's quirkier aspects. As a result, laughs are able to be evenly produced through both conflict and friendship, but instead of being in a mean-spirited "let's laugh at the freaks" kind of way, it comes more from sympathetic embarrassment on the audience's part.

It's also willing to change things up a little bit. The major difference is that, instead of displaying the usual ineptitude, both Ashburn and Mullins are good at their jobs and get their results. They're failing to proceed up the ladder due to various circumstances. Ashburn, while staunchly professional, is arrogant and physically incapable of working with anyone else. Mullins, on the other hand, has some interesting methods to get her results including, but not limited to, playing Russian Roulette with a male suspect's unmentionables. You may be expecting the feminist card to get played, but it's actually rarely pulled. Any grievances that their male counterparts have with them are, for the most part, justified, but their problems lie in the fact that it blinds them to the positives that both characters have. It would have been nice to see a few more well-rounded characters than just the two of them and pretty much all of the male characters feel like stock. However, let's not try and pretend it's the men who are usually getting the short straw when it comes to decent parts in films.

With the presence of both McCarthy and director Paul Feig, standards are set high as a direct result of their involvement in Bridesmaids, regardless of my own opinions on that film (it's overrated). However, to compare the two seems moderately pointless to me as the only real similarity between them is that they're both comedies and, on that basis, you might as well start comparing it to Scary Movie 5. If you liked Bridesmaids, you may like The Heat just as much, you may hate it or, if you're weird like me, you may think it's better. For me, the scale of recent cop comedies has 21 Jump Street at the top and The Other Guys way, way down at the bottom. 21 Jump Street made me literally laugh till it hurt and The Heat doesn't quite reach that level, but it comes closer than any other recent release that I can think of.

FOUR out of five

An Announcement (NO! I'm not ending the blog!)

First things first, thank you to anyone who has taken the time to read one of my reviews. I honestly expected hits to be in single figures for the blog. Suffice to say, they're not.

Particularly, thank you to anyone who has given me feedback. Some has been private, some has been done through other websites where I post my reviews. Wherever it's come from, I'm grateful for it and I'm happy to say that most of it has been positive.

There has, however, been one gripe and it's one I'm paying attention to, namely that the reviews are so long it puts some people off from reading them. I am happy to accept that this is probably me straying into self-indulgence.

So, from now on, reviews will be shorter. If you want to hear me elaborate, simply talk to me. But be warned, if you ask me to elaborate, I won't hesitate to oblige.

In addition, if you feel like providing any feedback, please do. It will be noted, appreciated and genuinely considered. Most seem to like this doing this in private, which is fine. You can leave comments below, or send any to partiallyeducated@gmail.com

Also, if you're interested in reviewing for the blog, please get in touch with me via e-mail. I won't be taking people on as regular writers at the moment, but will happily post up guest reviews.

Only God Forgives

A Partially Educated Review of Only God Forgives

In which I don't know if God would feel a need to forgive, more than just go "Meh"

Self-belief good, pretentiousness bad. It's a simple rule, but it's not always the easiest to follow. Self-belief leads to ambition, which, if not handled properly, leads to pretension and sometime it's possible to get there without even realising it. I live in the belief that, at some point, I'll probably stray into that territory in one of my reviews without realising it. For all I know, I already have. What I do know though is Nicolas Winding Refn is definitely capable of it. A recent BBC interview was opened with the question: "When did you fall in love with film?". His response (and I'm paraphrasing here, as I was unable to find a video to re-watch the interview) was "I would say that film fell in love with me." Interesting, thought I. Then I pondered on that statement only to realise that it was one of the most egregious examples of self-service since earlier in the year when Tarantino declared (and I'm not paraphrasing here) "I am responsible for people talking about slavery in America in a way that they have not in 30 years".

And 12 months later, Steve McQueen is responsible for showing the world that Django Unchained is nowhere near as good as people first thought.

I appreciate this is setting things up for a complete drubbing as far as Only God Forgives is concerned. Indeed, I wouldn't be alone as it's one of, if not the most polarising film of last year, as far as reception from fans and critics alike is concerned. In addition, the film's, at times overbearing, pretentiousness would usually leave me completely put off. So why then, do I feel a resounding sense of indifference to it?

Ryan Gosling plays Julian, an American drug-smuggler living in Thailand. His older brother, Billy (Tom Burke), is murdered by the father of an underage prostitute that Billy himself raped and then murdered. This leads to Julian being ordered by his mother Crystal (Kristin Scott Thomas) to return the favour, not only against Billy's murderer, but also the police who allowed the murder to happen. So far, so standard revenge thriller, but this, to his credit, is something that Winding Refn (here serving as both director and writer) would never allow to happen. He acknowledges the basic and overused revenge plot and then puts in his own stylistic touches to try and create something different. At times this works, at others it doesn't.

To it's credit, the film looks and sounds amazing. Everything from lighting and sound design to the cinematography work together to create a generally nasty feel to the film. This is oppressive in it's nature and the dim, seedy atmosphere remains present for the duration, only briefly letting up when the characters walk into areas they are yet to contaminate. The sound is dark and moody, relying far more on short, deep flourishes than it does on full pieces of music. This suits it far better than when music plays a bigger part; a critical fight scene has the brutality sadly undersold by the same music that's at the start of the trailer playing over it. 

While this nastiness is perfectly suited to Only God Forgives, it also manages to simultaneously create flaws, predominantly in the lack of a real human element. It's not that the characters aren't in the slightest bit likeable because there are twinges of humanity in Gosling. I emphasise twinges. The problem is that anything that may let you relate to the character is crude and sandwiched into situations that are partially his creation. As he watches a lady place her fingers within herself for his own enjoyment, tears being to fill his eyes. Any regret this may demonstrate is negated by the fact that he's still making her do it.

It's also impossible to see the remotest justification in his quest for revenge because he is avenging the murder of a paedophile, by murdering the murderers. It's not that the film isn't aware of this, it's fully aware of it and rarely seems like it's trying to say otherwise. The problem with this is that, in the end, it's all rendered a little predictable. Any doubts that you may have will be because it's a Winding Refn film and the expectation is that he will shake things up a little bit. As far as plot goes, he doesn't.

While Only God Forgives is a wordy film by Winding Refn's own standards, it isn't by general standards. When dialogue is used, it's used because it's essential rather than because they worried that people will get bored. In addition, he adopts an acid-trip style of presentation, complete with his viewing Julian's own hallucinations with him. Where it works, it works very well, but sometimes it feels recycled. There are images here that you will have seen before and some even border on clichéd (blood pouring from a tap, an endlessly expanding corridor). Whether you loved or hated his previous films (and God did I hate Valhalla Rising), you could never try and say that they were like anything you had seen before. Not so with Only God Forgives. While it's true that no one else makes films like Winding Refn does, he has made enough films for his style to become familiar and feel far too similar to his past work. The freshness is beginning to wear off.

For the performances, it all feels a little par for the course. Ryan Gosling smoulders… a lot. His eyes have the coldness that they demonstrated in Drive and, yes, he may have the looks to make the girls swoon, but it's all starting to feel a little bit samey. Personality is slowly leaving him to the point where Keanu Reeves may soon be suing him for trademark infringement. Meanwhile, Vithaya Pansringarm takes on the chief antagonist role, seemingly having come from out of nowhere other than The Prince And Me 4 and a brief part in The Hangover 2. Unfortunately, Pansringarm is given little to do other than look mean, chop people's arms off and sing karaoke. Not that we're stereotyping here.

Praise her parents then for the exception to the rule that is Kristin Scott Thomas, delivering a fantastic and, for her, completely unique performance that completely and very much metaphorically (definitely not literally) lights the film up whenever she's around. With an incredibly twisted sense of honour and equally messed up opinions on who's bringing that honour to her family (that would be the paedophile son again), Crystal is the very personification of evil. What Lady Macbeth was to her husband, Crystal is to her sons, seemingly displaying the same knowledge of their bedroom-bound assets. With her strengths and weaknesses on full show, Crystal feels like the only character who is vaguely human in the most repugnant and entirely unrelateable sense of the word. Whilst it helps that Winding Refn is blatantly in love with her and thus makes sure she's the best-written character, without Scott Thomas' performance that would be all for nought.

Then, we have the violence and this brings us back to Mr Tarantino as he and Winding Refn have both had hefty portions of their career defined by the use of extreme violence. However, as far as Windng Refn is concerned, he makes Tarantino look like Richard Curtis. The critical difference is in reality. The cartoonish style that Tarantino often displays is entirely shunned by Winding Refn as everything he presents feels painfully and horrifically real. This has a torture scene that owes a debt to Reservoir Dogs, but, for outright grimness, surpasses it in every way. That's not necessarily to say it's a better approach, as both of their methods usually achieve their intentions. Personally, I'm more inclined to hearing it, rather than seeing it as the imagination will often conjure up images far worse than anything that the film would ever show. However, if success is based on effectiveness, then it works here.

I started Only God Forgives, fully expecting to follow it with a passionate review. It seemed like the sort of film where I'd want to commemorate it on my wall. I'd either frame it in a beautiful antique golden shrine or fire a nail-gun through the disc, ensuring that it would never sully my screen again. Instead, it's just not bad. It's perfectly watchable and, for the most part, was entirely competent at holding my attention. There are moments of absolute brilliance, but these are balanced out by moments of lesser quality. In the end though, Only God Forgives' critical problem is that it is it's own biggest fan, to the point where I'm not sure anyone could ever like it as much as it likes itself.

THREE out of five