IN BRUGES Focus Features
Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey Karten
Grade: B+
Directed by: Martin McDonagh
Written By: Martin McDonagh
Cast: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes, Clemence Poesy, Jeremie Renier, Jordan Prentice, Thekla Reuten, Mark Donovan, Eric Godon, Rudy Blomme, Theo Stevenson
Screened at: Universal, NYC, 1/29/08
Opens: February 8, 2008 When you greet your friends, those couples you’ve known for a long time who have just come back from Europe, did you ever hear them say anything other than what a great time they’ve had? Sure, they’ve spent a fortune, especially now that the dollar is in the toilet and they’re not about to play the sucker and say they’d been miserable. But euros to dollars the husband and wife or the guy and his pal, or the woman and her buddy have different tastes. He likes the pubs, the bullfights, the football matches, while she goes for the museums, the churches, the shopping, the walks about the centuries’-old cobblestone streets. They get into fights, they don’t talk for hours, they’re miserable. This is the situation facing one of the oddest couples in movies during the past several months, two men who have only one thing in common. They kill for money. Other than that, you put them together in the same room, you have a formula for dissatisfaction. But wait! You also have a chance for some real bonding, for the possibility that these two disparate types, notwithstanding their initial lack of affinity, will get to grow on each other, even go so far as to risk their lives when necessary for the other’s survival. If this sounds like some sort of spiritual film, it is, but not in any way you may have seen such celluloid in Sunday school. Martin McDonagh in quite a stunner for a feature-length debut mixes vulgar comedy with bloodlust almost seamlessly, playing two great actors off against each other, to create an involving serio-comic thriller that in a few scenes could have used subtitles given the heavy accent of Dubliner Brendan Gleeson. The story finds Ray (Colin Farrell) and fellow hit-man Ken (Brendan Gleeson) fleeing London for one of Europe’s oldest cities, Bruges, Belgium, on orders from boss Harry (Ralph Fiennes) after a killing. Stuck in one room of a pension during a crowded Christmas season in this small historic down, Ray kvetches while Ken kvells; in other words Ray prefers the frantic life of London while Ken digs the magic of a medieval fairy-tale land. Ray gets a chance at happiness, however, when he meets Chloe (Clemence Poesy), who appears to be part of a movie crew currently filming a Dutch film involving a dwarf performer, Jimmy (Jordan Prentice), though things turn dour when he almost becomes the victim of a robbery. When an unusual order comes from Harry in London, a mostly comic adventure turns mighty bloody. The chief quality of the movie is the spot-on chemistry of two seasoned actors, Gleeson and Farrell, the latter evoking laughs simply by his facial expressions—the frowns, the wide-eyed wonder, the grimaces—while Gleeson is more the straight-man, the Bud Abbott to Farrell’s Lou Costello. McDonagh, who scripted the scenes while at the helm, has a way with dialogue, knocking out wisecrack after bon mot, while Eigil Bryld’s camera makes full use of Bruges as a major character in the comedy. The burgomeister of the town as well as its tourist commission must have had mixed feelings about giving the cast and crew the run of the place for two months. On the one hand, the picture will probably increase tourism by people who may never have known that it’s called the Venice of the North, also the location of a museum with one of the most exciting painters of all time, Hieronymous Bosch—a surrealist who was so far ahead of his time that we in the twenty-first century may not have caught up with him yet. On the other hand, having Ray describe as pure hell is not what the mayor may have had in mind, though Mr. Bosch could possibly have thought that way as well. Rated R. 107 minutes. © 2008 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online
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