'Only God Forgives' is a short film that combines the wild effect of the western movies with the dramatic influence of what we recall of Fernando Pessoa’s poetry. Truth be told, we don’t know how the poetry vibe came to us, but we are sure we felt the same way when reading the ‘Oblique Rain’ by the great Portuguese poetry writer. In some spectacular way, the hidden vibe of this short western movie is a poem about life and death, one of survival and lost emotions, a poem that transcends the classical themes of love, death, life, and goes to another level of understanding the human self.

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What we loved the most in this short film were the two characters: Ned Doolin (played by Travis Lee Eller) and The Preacher (played by Jim Kelly). The story brings them together in a hard moment as Doolin is hiding after a mass shooting in a nearby village, whilst The Preacher is wandering through the desert after being in the town where the tragedy took place sometime before. Doolin is low on water, and there aren’t many options to deal with this matter out in the wild. When he sees a man approaching, his conservation and defense instincts are trigged, trying to get near the ‘intruder’. Luckily for him, The Preacher has a full canteen and seems just like an angel sent from heaven to give him the awaited redemption. The dialogue between the two characters is pure and sincere, making Ned Doolin kneel in front of God to seek forgiveness.

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Tino Luciano created a world where the good and the evil collide very fast in a way that one cannot know whether it is an angel from heaven they have in front of them or one of Lucifer’s sidekicks; the important lesson here is to trust no one but yourself. ‘Only God Forgives’ comes with beautifully enhanced visuals, along with a mood-setting soundtrack, perfect for transposing the viewer into another perceivable dimension, all of this in the blink of an eye!

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Written by Vlad A. G