In Bruges

Date posted: Sun, 20/04/2008 - 9:32am

Year:	2008
Director:	Martin McDonagh
Cast:	Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, and Ralph Fiennes
Rating:	B+
Reviewed by:	David Holmes

Despite what its shrill, brassy trailer would have you believe, In Bruges is not the latest film by Guy Ritchie. There are no aggressive jump-cuts, its soundtrack is not plagued by washed-up Britpoppers, and (most thankfully) Jason Statham is in no way involved. In fact, the film is hardly a gangster comedy at all. Yes, its two protagonists are hitmen and the dialogue is frequently hilarious, but here the bad guys make jokes not for the amusement of the viewer, but as a desperate attempt to find levity in a life devoted to brutality and murder. Every outburst of laughter and jubilation serves only to distract the characters from the sense that death (either their own or an adversary's) could be around every corner. And while Ray and Ken (Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson) would no doubt be great guys to share a night of drinks, drugs, and Belgian hookers with, writer/director Martin McDonagh never lets the audience forget how these men make their living, and what sort of toll it takes on their souls.

This is one of the many ways In Bruges toys with the audience’s expectations of the gangster movie. Usually, it’s done to produce ironic laughter, like when McDonagh sets up all the elements for a terrific shoot-out before letting the action play out in an entirely unanticipated and darkly hilarious direction. Other times, the director intends only to churn our stomachs, portraying each death, no matter how absurd or ironic the circumstances, in horrifyingly graphic tones. When someone is killed, it’s neither stylized nor discreet, but instead a disturbing, inglorious mess. Some of the characters kill for money, others out of perverted notions of honor, but the end result never amounts to anything more than a perpetuating cycle of guilt, loss, injustice, and absurdity. In fact, it’s in the audience’s favor that the body count of In Bruges is relatively low, and that the vast majority of the film consists of witty banter, unpredictable antics, and beautiful yet puzzlingly abundant shots of Bruges’ medieval architecture. Otherwise the film would be too morose for all but the most brooding filmgoers.

It is in this way that the film’s refusal to commit to a single tone (the downfall of many black comedies) is actually one of its greatest assets. As the camera lovingly observes Ray and Ken travel through the town’s finest belfries and brothels following a botched London hit, there is the palpable sense that anything can happen. A fistfight might break out in an expensive restaurant. A man could be irrevocably harmed by a gun filled with blanks. That these comic incidents eventually come back to haunt the protagonists in increasingly tragic ways is proof of In Bruges’s tight storytelling, despite the freewheeling volatility of each scene.

 

Much of that unpredictability also comes from the loose cannon antics of Colin Farrell who continues to quietly pad his impressive resume by turning in another formidable performance built on nuance and nerves. His Ray is a frightened young man, unable to cope with the morbid consequences of his chosen trade. As he gazes listlessly upon the hellish frescos painted on the old medieval church-walls, it’s as if he’s stealing a glimpse of his own future. Ray tries with varying degrees of success to drown his guilt with drink, drugs, sex, and hopeless good humor, but his demons are never far behind. And when they finally catch up to him, it's at the intersection of innocence and arrogance, with each ideal respectively personified by Ken (Gleeson, one of the great character actors of our time) and his vengeful boss, Harry (Ralph Fiennes who gets all the best lines as one of the drollest madmen in film history).

As a character study, In Bruges is an electrifying portrait of charming murderers, but as a comedy, its success is a bit more uneven. Ray’s whole “Bruges is boring unless you're a retarded farmer” routine grows stale half-way through the trailer, and while I respect the need for karate-chopping dwarves in most serious films, I question whether they were really necessary in this case. But the fact that McDonagh has room to grow as a filmmaker only speaks to the tantalizing possibilities of his future work. He's already made the first great film of 2008, and as long as his talent for crafting exhilarating narratives remains intact, there's no telling how far he can go.