Only God Forgives is a 2013 action film[7][8] written and directed by Nicolas Winding Refn and stars Ryan Gosling, Kristin Scott Thomas and Vithaya Pansringarm.

[10][11][12][13] Only God Forgives was released at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival to polarized reviews from critics who praised its soundtrack, action sequences and Refn's traditional style, but was heavily criticised for its screenwriting and characterization.

Julian and Billy are brothers and American expatriates, who run a Muay Thai boxing club in Bangkok as a front for drug dealing.

Later, Julian returns to the hotel and finds his mother's corpse, where he cuts open her abdomen and shoves his hand inside it.

Refn has said that "[f]rom the beginning, [he] had the idea of a thriller produced as a western, all in the Far East, and with a modern cowboy hero.

The site's consensus states: "Director Refn remains as visually stylish as ever, but Only God Forgives fails to add enough narrative smarts or relatable characters to ground its beautifully filmed depravity.

But he praised Refn for following up his commercially successful film Drive with "...this abstruse, neon-dunked nightmare that spits in the face of coherence and flicks at the earlobes of good taste".

[32] In an alternative review published in The Guardian, John Patterson was highly critical of the film, citing its lack of originality and the low degree of focus on plot: "Somewhere in here is a story that Refn can hardly be bothered to tell...

If he had created something like Only God Forgives, substituting his own quirky casting for the rather staid choices made by actual director Nicolas Winding Refn, he would have walked away from Cannes 2013 with yet another Palme d'Or, another notch in his already sizeable artistic belt, and the kind of critical appreciation that only comes when a proven auteur once again establishes his creative credentials.

"[33] Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times gave this film a positive review, giving it three and a half stars saying: "Refn's follow-up effort to the similarly polarizing Drive (which I thought was flat-out great) is even more stylized and daring.

Drive star Ryan Gosling (who is clearly interested in carving out a career with at least as many bold, indie-type roles as commercial, leading-man fare) strikes a Brando pose playing Julian, a smoldering, seemingly lethal American who navigates the seediest sides of Bangkok.