By Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive won the Flixist Dactyl for 2011’s Best Film, as well as the Reader’s Choice Award and Best Actor for star Ryan Gosling. In other words, it was quite popular around these parts. Gosling and Winding Refn are teaming up again for this year’s Only God Forgives and we now have a first image from the film. First published on Wild Bunch, it plays into the Drive fanbase’s passion for bold colours and surly Ryan Gosling expressions.
IndieWire are also reporting that The Weinstein Company’s VOD service, Shingle, has picked up the rights to the film for $2.5m. The story revolves around a gangster (played by Gosling) living in Bangkok whose drug-smuggling family gets into a bloody feud with the local police force, resulting in enormous quantities of bloody violence and dismemberment. Check the synopsis in its full craziness after the break, along with the first official image from the film.
[IndieWire, via Wild Bunch]
Bangkok. Ten years ago Julian killed a cop and went on the run. Now he manages a Thai boxing club as a front for a drugs operation. Respected in the criminal underworld, deep inside, he feels empty.
When Julian’s brother murders a prostitute the police call on retired cop Chang – the Angel of Vengeance. Chang allows the father to kill his daughter’s murderer, then ‘restores order’ by chopping off the man’s right hand.
Julian’s mother Jenna – the head of a powerful criminal organization – arrives in Bangkok to collect her son’s body. She dispatches Julian to find his killers and ‘raise hell’.
Increasingly obsessed with the Angel of Vengeance, Julian challenges him to a boxing match, hoping that by defeating him he might find spiritual release… but Chang triumphs. A furious Jenna plots revenge and the stage is set for a bloody journey through betrayal and vengeance towards a final confrontation and the possibility of redemption.