TV & Movie Crime Log: Southcliffe, Only God Forgives

The Returned has finished, and the fervent online debate has begun: will the second season, due next year, eventually deliver answers to its multiple secrets, or will us poor viewers be forced to make a leap of faith of Lost proportions?

Because we all know how that turned out.

In the meantime, Channel 4 has another drama lined up to keep us gripped on Sunday night. Southcliffe tells the harrowing story of a spate of shootings that take place over a single day in a fictional market town.

Rory Kinnear stars as the journalist who returns to his hometown while trying to come to terms with dark events from his own past. It’s apparently powerful stuff, and comes from the pen of Tony Grisoni, whose adaptation of the similarly dark Red Riding trilogy – from the brilliant novels by David Peace – was a high-water mark for Channel Four drama.

Southcliffe is on Channel 4 at 9pm on Sunday night for the next four weeks.

There’s also a movie out this weekend that you may be interested in if crime thrillers are your bag - and as you’re reading this, I guessing they are.

Only God Forgives is Nicolas Winding Refn’s movie follow-up to Drive. It also stars Ryan Gosling again, this time as a drug-smuggler hunting for his brother’s killers. It’s set in Bangkok and features Thai Boxing and a lot of mega-violence, as you can imagine from the director of Drive and Bronson.

If you’re looking for something more interesting than the usual superhero fayre, it’s lurid, cool and stylized, Refn has said the film features a ‘heightened reality,’ which means it probably won’t be everybody’s cup of tea. But reviews have been decidedly mixed. At Cannes it received both boos and a standing ovation - presumably not by the same bewildered audience. Check out this moody piece of business:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9ziAWl9AEA