NightTrekker

I'm not sure what's to blame for the overwhelmingly negative reception--critical and popular--towards Only God Forgives. It seems too condescending and self-congratulatory to dismiss the critics by saying they "just didn't get it" or to slander audiences with the ADD-generation label. But still, I'm stuck without an explanation as to how such a fantastic (and admittedly challenging) film was so completely trashed by people who really should have known better.

Maybe it was due to Refn's preceding film, Drive, which arguably introduced him to American audiences. (Refn's earlier English release Fear X, which stylistically shares a lot in common with OGF, came and went relatively unheralded, perhaps for many of the same reasons this film was disliked.) While OGF shares the same leading man as Drive, there the similarities between the two end. Maybe critics and audiences expected or wanted a spiritual successor to Drive instead of the spare, smoldering film they got.

Maybe only a few critics were familiar with Refn's earlier films. The average moviegoer can't be expected to have seen Refn's earlier Danish films such as Valhalla Rising, but I have to assume at least some of the professionals were familiar with the director's body of work. If that's so, I can sympathize. As an introduction to Refn's directorial and writing style, VH was admittedly a challenge for me, though I ultimately loved the experience. Like OGF, the on-screen action (one almost wants to call it "movement" instead) unfolds at a surreal, disconcerting, and potentially frustrating pace, and the paucity of dialog and the shocking violence demanded the sometimes confused and frustrated viewer (and I was!) continue watching, putting faith in the director's abilities and intentions.

Or maybe--and I'm just speculating here--something about the substance of OGF repulsed viewers. The film's Bangkok exists as a nightmarish, neon-lit slum cloaked in an almost perpetual night. Violent crime seems not to be extraordinary or particularly shocking to its citizens. The major players are almost exclusively damaged, severely dysfunctional people, and some are outright monstrous. (Come to think of it, I am not sure there is a single shot of a person genuinely smiling throughout the entire thing.) And the violence, while sometimes only implied, is truly brutal. There seems, in my experience, to be a growing and reactionary political mindset/philosophy that rebukes all things remotely violent as unacceptable. I wonder if that's not the case here.

Honestly, I suspect it's a little bit of all of these things. I can see how OGF's oddly deliberate pacing, the director's off-putting style—as a friend well described it, the action seems to be driven by the camera's determined movements, not by dialog or character movement—and the deeply unpleasant and disturbing subject matter could all come together to convince someone they are watching a Bad Movie.

But violence in a film (or, indeed, anything depicted in any work of art) does not imply an acceptance or endorsement of violence on the part of the film or its director. From a professional, competent storyteller, an unpleasant experience can be assumed to be intentionally unpleasant and to serve a purpose. And the idiosyncrasies of a director's personal style can be either pointlessly spurned by the viewer or accepted, if only temporarily, as a part of the intended experience. Confusion and lack of perfect understanding do not have to mean the audience gives up and prematurely passes judgment in exasperated bewilderment. (I imagine some of these critics watching a Tarkovsky film and their heads exploding.) I think that these are all fairly obvious and widely accepted truths when dealing with art.

So I'm back to my original problem: why was OGF overwhelmingly hated by critics and audiences? I have no clear understanding.

But if you watch films for more than just entertainment, if you're comfortable with art even (or especially) when you don't understand it, I'm sure YOU should ignore the negative consensus and give Only God Forgives a try. In my opinion, Refn hasn't directed a single bad film, and I believe Only God Forgives is among his best. Just be prepared for the challenge.

I started watching Nowhere Man, like many people here, because it came on after Star Trek: Voyager, and my interest in the former soon began to eclipse my interest in the latter. I didn't catch every episode (given its obvious quality I assumed I would have ample opportunity to watch it in reruns) but the ones I did see had a huge impact on me and I was lucky enough to see the final episode.

Nowhere Man is the kind of show you need to discuss with other viewers, but I can count on one hand the number of people I've met who remember it and inexplicably none of them cared for it. I was totally nuts for the show when it was on the air but I was much younger at the time. Truthfully, over the years I had worried that it would not live up to my memories.

Finally, Nowhere Man's single season has been released in a great 9-disc DVD set, and after 10 years I've truly enjoyed the chance to rediscover each of the 25 episodes. It's just as good as I remembered (and even better in some cases), with only a few episodes that don't quite measure up to the rest. Bruce Greenwood's performance is incredible. There is literally nobody else who could have made Thomas Veil more human. He makes even the silent moments a fascinating pleasure and basically carries the entire series. That's not to suggest that there aren't great performances from other actors, but Greenwood is the keystone of the show and he handles the weight effortlessly. You don't see acting of this quality on television very often. The writing is consistently solid and smart (though as I mentioned there are some "off" episodes), and Mark Snow (of The X-Files and Millennium fame) provides a wonderfully varied, appropriately moody soundtrack.

The bottom line: if you're a fan of The Prisoner (which strongly influenced the creator of the series) and/or The X-Files, you owe it to yourself to give Nowhere Man a chance. It's hard to believe that a show this good was canceled and it's harder to believe it graced a channel like UPN. At least we got one great season out of it.

I saw this movie during a Tolkien-themed Interim class during my sophomore year of college. I was seated unfortunately close to the screen and my professor chose me to serve as a whipping boy- everyone else was laughing, but they weren't within constant eyesight.

Let's get it out of the way: the Peter Jackson 'Lord of the Rings' films do owe something to the Bakshi film. In Jackson's version of The Fellowship of the Ring, for instance, the scene in which the Black Riders assault the empty inn beds is almost a complete carbon copy of the scene in Bakshi's film, shot by shot. You could call this plagiarism or homage, depending on your agenda.

I'm sure the similarities don't stop there. I'm not going to do any research to find out what they are, because that would imply I have some mote of respect for this film. I'm sure others have outlined the similarities- look around.

This movie is a complete train wreck in every sense of the metaphor, and many, many people died in the accident. I've decided to list what I can remember in a more or less chronological fashion- If I've left out anything else that offended me it's because I'm completely overwhelmed, confronted with a wealth of failure (and, at high points, mediocrity).

*Due to heavy use of rotoscoping, Gandalf is no longer a gentle, wise wizard but a wildly flailing prophet of doom (whose hat inexplicably changes color once or twice during the course of the film).

*Saruman the White is sometimes referred to as 'Aruman' during the film, without explanation. He wears purple and red for some mysterious reason.

*Sam is flat out hideous. The portrayal of his friendship with Frodo is strangely childlike and unsatisfying. Yes, hobbits are small like children, but they are NOT children.

*Merry and Pippin are never introduced--they simply appear during a scene change with a one-sentence explanation. The film is filled with sloppy editing like this.

*Frodo, Sam, Pippin and Merry are singing merrily as they skip through along the road. One of the hobbits procures a lute at least twice as large as he is from behind his back--which was not visible before--and begins strumming in typical fantasy bard fashion as they all break into "la-la-la"s. AWFUL.

*Aragorn, apparently, is a Native American dressed in an extremely stereotypical fantasy tunic (no pants), complete with huge, square pilgrim belt buckle. He is arguably the worst swordsman in the entire movie--oftentimes he gets one wobbly swing in before being knocked flat on his ass.

*The Black Riders appear more like lepers than menacing instruments of evil. They limp everywhere they go at a painfully slow pace. This is disturbing to be sure, but not frightening.

*The scene before the Black Riders attempt to cross the Ford of Bruinen (in which they stare at Frodo, who is on the other side on horseback) goes on forever, during which time the Riders rear their horses in a vaguely threatening manner and... do nothing else. The scene was probably intended to illustrate Frodo's hallucinatory decline as he succumbs to his wound. It turns out to be more plodding than anything else.

*Gimli the Dwarf is just as tall as Legolas the Elf. He's a DWARF. There is simply no excuse for that. He also looks like a bastardized David the Gnome. It's a crude but accurate description.

*Boromir appears to have pilfered Elmer Fudd's golden Viking armor from that Bugs Bunny opera episode. He looks ridiculous.

*Despite the similarity to Tolkien's illustration, the Balrog is howl inducing and the least-threatening villain in the entire film. It looks like someone wearing pink bedroom slippers, and it's barely taller than Gandalf. "Purists" may prefer this Balrog, but I'll take Jackson's version any day.

*The battle scenes are awkward and embarrassing. Almost none of the characters display any level of competency with their armaments. I'm not asking for action-packed scenes like those in Jackson's film, but they ARE supposed to be fighting.

*Treebeard makes a very short appearance, and I was sorry he bothered to show up at all. Watch the film, you'll see what I mean.

Alright, now for the GOOD parts of the film.

*Some of the voice acting is pretty good. It isn't that Aragorn SOUNDS bad, he just looks kind of like the Jolly Green Giant.

*Galadriel is somewhat interesting in this portrayal; like Tom Bombadil, she seems immune to the Ring's powers of temptation, and her voice actress isn't horrible either.

*Boromir's death isn't as heart wrenching as in Jackson's portrayal of the same scene, but it's still appropriately dramatic (and more true to his death in the book, though I don't believe Jackson made a mistake shooting it the way he did).

*As my professor pointed out (between whispered threats), the orcs (mainly at Helm's Deep, if I'm correct) resemble the war-ravaged corpses of soldiers, a political statement that works pretty well if you realize what's being attempted.

*While this isn't really a positive point about the film, Bakshi can't be blamed for the majority of the failures in this movie, or so I've been told--the project was on a tight budget, and late in its production he lost creative control to some of the higher-ups (who I'm sure hadn't read the books).

Let me be clear: I respect Bakshi for even attempting something of this magnitude. I simply have a hard time believing he was happy with the final product.

Overall, I cannot in any way recommend this blasphemous adaptation of Tolkien's classic trilogy even for laughs, unless you've already read the books and have your own visualizations of the characters, places and events. I'm sure somebody, somewhere, will pick a copy of this up in confusion; if you do, keep an open mind and glean what good you can from it.