YMMV / Only God Forgives

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Did Julian hate his brother because he was their mother's favorite or because of his depravity? Or did he hate him at all and his mother just thought he did? Did he really kill his father as his mother claimed?
  • Is Chang a Hero Antagonist or the real main character and is he any better than the criminals he hunts?
  • There is a popular theory in that Chang is God.
    • This is backed up by Refn himself, who directed Chang's actor by literally whispering in his ear: "You are God."
• Awesome Moments:
  • Chang's pretty badass in general, but his greatest moment comes when he effortlessly turns the tables on Crystal's assassins, nailing one with a headshot from his pistol and using a cooking pot to throw boiling water in the face of another before beating him senseless with it.
  • The insanely one-sided fistfight between Julian and Chang in the gym no thanks to the badass boss level-sounding music playing over the scene. Even people who otherwise disliked the movie consider this scene a highlight.
• Awesome Music: The soundtrack by Cliff Martinez is pretty great, particularly the closing theme.
• Complete Monster: Billy Thompson is a violent heroin dealer with a penchant for raping and beating prostitutes. Casually deciding he wants to "fuck a 14-year-old", Billy hunts down a teenage sex worker to brutally violate and beat to death. Dying himself in a vigilante killing, his brother Julian finds Billy's crime so disgusting he refuses to avenge him.
• Fridge Horror: Why does Julian appear to have an aversion to physical sex and prefers to watch Mai pleasure herself instead? Because many victims of sexual abuse (as his mother clearly inflicted on him) tend to develop either massive discomfort at the idea of physical sex or even the polar opposite.
• Fanon Welding: The film is usually considered to be a prequel to Refn's other movie Drive (2011) especially since Ryan Gosling plays similar characters in both works.
• Funny Moments: During the not-fight scene the two cops following Chang hang back and watch it happen; the camera cuts away to them several times showing they not only don't move, they don't even change expressions. The sheer incongruity between what's going on and their (lack of) reaction ends up being quite (unintentionally?) hilarious.
• Magnificent Bastard: Lieutenant Chang is a vigilante cop who views himself as God cleansing an unjust world. Brought into conflict with the criminal Thompson family after setting up the killing of the older son, Billy, Chang also maims the father of the prostitute Billy raped and killed for allowing his teenage daughter into sex work. When Billy's mother Crystal arrives, Chang effortlessly evades her attempt to assassinate him and tortures his way through her minions, even beating down her other sympathetic son Julian to discover her whereabouts. Hunting Crystal to her hotel, Chang executes the evil woman while his influence on Julian leads to him sparing Chang's own family, ending the work victorious and positioned to continue purging the underworld.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Billy raping and murdering a teenager in the first 5 minutes.
  • Depending on how you perceive him, Chang crosses this when he brutally tortures Crystal’s henchman to death.
  • Julian's mother ordering him to kill Chang's entire family.
• Narm:
  • "TAKE IT OFF!"
  • The death scene of Crystal's henchman also descends into this territory, as he hams up his slow, excruciating death to the point of absurdity.
  • A lot of the dialogue tends to be this due to how unreal and uncanny it sounds spoken out loud, especially the immensely uncomfortable conversation at the dinner table between Julian, Mai, and Crystal.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Billy's corpse by the time Yoi Chan Lee is through with him.
  • Chang slicing up Li Po's hired gunman so viciously, his ribcage becomes visible.
  • The highly controversial scene in which Chang tortures Crystal's henchman got under the skin of many as a result of its level of graphic violence.
  • Much like Drive (2011) before it and The Neon Demon after it, the violence in this movie is borderline nauseating and brutal.
• Squick: Crystal's relationship with her sons in general. Special mention goes to a scene after her death, where Julian disembowels her corpse and sticks his hand inside her womb.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: One of the most common complaints is that every character is either unlikable, inscrutable, or both.
• Vanilla Protagonist: Julian has very little agency and not much of a personality, being mostly a toy for his mother.

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