10 Movies That Made Things Complicated To Hide Their Flaws

2. Only God Forgives

When Nicolas Winding Refn made Drive, he was proclaimed a master of a sort of hyper-cool, ultra-hip indie art movement that existed entirely within the boundaries of that movie. He invented indiesploitation, crashing a tender humanist love story with the kind of swaggering, ultra-violent action you'd expect in Grindhouse films.

The surprising impact of that film meant that what he did next was always going to be even more hotly hyped and unfortunately what he did was make a second love letter to his obsession with the silent mythology of Ryan Gosling. He spoke very little in Drive, to the betterment of his character, but in Only God Forgives, he's muted even more - to the point that it feels like a prank pulled by a director on an audience that is altogether too big for his liking.

The film is nonsensical, provocative and consciously designed to be so complicated that you don't pick too much away and reveal that it's no more than an exercise in depravity. It's a film made for people who revel in giving five star reviews to things nobody else understands, which is handy, because that's also who it's clearly aimed at.