Film Review: In Bruges

Black comedies are hard to do well and political incorrectness is few and far between in the current world. Luckily Martin McDonagh’s new film has both of those and he throws in a bit of slapstick humour among the slew of drugs, violence and midgets. Starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as believable hitmen with a crisis of conscience.

Martin McDonagh is primarily a playwright, his first feature film is In Bruges. He had some interesting things to say on the Film Weekly Podcast from the Guardian.

It was really insightful to hear how he came up with the screenplay. Like all good stories it started with the characters, and then lets move the setting to a beautiful location, this time it’s Bruges (in Belgium). Then what do they do? They’re hitmen. What are they there? They’re hiding out. And so on, until you have this… I’m sure it’s not the normal way to create a story.

The story unravels very well and keeps with the over arching joke that, “Bruges is a shithole” while still keeping it funny. This is very much because of the superb performances and the black humour really works well.

Most surprising of all is Ray Fiennes who is unrecognisable as a mob boss. It’s like his face has been altered with surgery, that’s how good he plays his character.

This film has humour, love, guilt, violence and a fair bit of swearing. It ticks a lot of the political correctness no-no’s and perhaps that’s why we laugh so. One of my favorite films of the year so far, go see it!

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