In Bruges

Rating: 4/5
Starring: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes
Written and Directed by: Martin McDonagh
Showing at: the Tivoli

The new action-comedy “In Bruges,” written and directed by famed playwright Martin McDonagh, takes place almost entirely within the walls of the Belgian town. McDonagh makes an interesting choice casting this well-preserved medieval city as a surrogate purgatory for languishing Irish hit-men, Ray and Ken.

Ken, who has been in the murder-for-hire game a while, is resolved to play the tourist and enjoy himself while they wait for the dust to die down and the boss to call. Ray, having recently finished his first job and created his first bit of regrettable collateral damage, is in hell. Bruges just isn’t his kind of town. Ken can’t understand Ray’s childish attitude as they stroll through the quaint streets taking in the glorious architecture and the charming canals. Ray voices his thought simply and crassly. “If I’d grown up on a farm and was retarded, Bruges might impress me, but I didn’t, so it doesn’t.”

Colin Farrell, in his first comedic role in quite some time, puts all of his Irish charm into Ray. Even when he’s ranting about suicide rates among midgets, mercilessly mocking fat Americans or stealing coke and X from Chloe, a girl he meets on a Belgian film set, we still like Ray. Maybe it’s because he says a lot of the things most of us dare not or maybe it’s just that Farrell is once again showing off that charisma he hinted at early in his career.

Living teddy bear Brendan Gleeson is wonderful as the warm and paternal Ken. His conversations with Ray, while wonderfully written, could have easily degraded into obnoxious diatribes and monologues without the proper blend of detachment and earnestness.

McDonagh, in his feature directorial debut, has a few problems finding the exact space he wants his movie to fill. Ray’s Ritalin-deprived restlessness sometimes intrudes into the jumping themes of the movie. When the boss, Harry (a foul-mouthed Ralph Fiennes) finally calls and changes the nature of their little holiday entirely, McDonagh struggles to bring all the wonderful tangents together. “In Bruges,” half comedy, half shootout, half introspective drama, is endlessly funny, often tense and ultimately affecting.

But what blends nicely on stage often confuses on screen. When Ray and Harry trade shots late in the movie, the pregnant hotel manager steps in and tries to get these two idiots to think logically. All they can come up with is a convoluted, albeit hysterical, plan to move the shoot-out outside. The dreamy conclusion, which features heavy allusion to Flemish painter Hieronymus Bosch, works, but not as well as it might if most of the characters weren’t so ridiculous.

Bruges is a lovely town, and why it hasn’t served as a backdrop for more movies is a mystery. Martin McDonagh makes it a viable purgatory, heaven for some, hell for others, a place where sins of the past must be faced. More than that, he makes “In Bruges” into a thoroughly entertaining and interesting film, but not a glorious one. McDonagh certainly revitalizes a genre, the witty hit-man dramedy, that was well worn out by the mid-nineties. He hasn’t let slip the directorial talent promised by his Oscar-winning short film “Six Shooter,” but he has some room to get better.

I’ll enjoy watching him as he most assuredly does.

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 15th, 2008 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Cadenza. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.