FilmStew Review 19.01.08
Source: FilmStew
Hitmen on Holiday
Nearly two decades after making his feature film debut in 1971 with the Albert Finney crime comedy Gumshoe, filmmaker Stephen Frears followed in 1984 with his second effort The Hit, a much darker black comedy about two British hit men (John Hurt, Tim Roth) who are sent to Madrid, Spain to kidnap a gangster hiding there (Terence Stamp) and return him to England. Though The Hit was nominated for a Special Distinction Award at the 1986 Independent Spirit Awards (it lost to The Kiss of the Spider Woman), it never quite broke beyond the status of cult film here in the United States.
Have always wanted to work together 
Now comes the equally cultish In Bruges, playwright turned filmmaker Martin McDonagh’s Brussels set counterpart, and just as it was clear that Frears with The Hit had come from the world of television (where he toiled in between his first two films), there’s no doubt that McDonagh is a veteran of the stage. For his debut film, the story of two hit men (Brendan Gleeson, Colin Farrell) sent to Belgium after their latest job goes sideways, could just as easily have been a two-character play set largely in a Bruges hotel room.
Will McDonagh, who won an Oscar in 2005 for his live action short Six Shooter, go on to have the kind of diverse film career that Frears has? It’s too early to tell. But after three weeks of rehearsals with his two leads, he has expertly run them through the transom of pitch black wit combied with outsized violence to produce with In Bruges a striking, hilarious and oddly poignant feature debut. After making its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival this past Thursday, it opens in U.S. theaters on February 8th.
Had McDonagh himself not visited Bruges some four years ago, we might well have been treated to a film set in Croydon or Coventry. But neither of those places would be as evocative as Bruges, a picture postcard-perfect town with a medieval flavor that lends a fairy tale quality to the proceedings. While Ken (Gleeson) marvels at it all, the bored-out-of-his-skull Ray (Farrell) surmises that the place might be hell.
Still English, but no longer at all patient
As Ken drags Ray on a sightseeing tour of the town, including a boat trip down a canal and a visit to the city's famous bell tower, with the two bickering all the way, the pair's interplay is very much like that of Roth and the older Hurt in The Hit. (To show you how far back that Frears film dates to, it earned Roth a BAFTA Award nomination as Most Outstanding Newcomer!)
Farrell of course is no newcomer. But after losing his way in things like Alexander, Ask the Dust and Miami Vice, the 31-year-old Dubliner has never been better. Like the character he plays in Woody Allen's Cassandra's Dream, a film coincidentally opening theatrically in the U.S. the day after the Sundance debut of In Bruges, Ray is a newly minted hit man whose conscience is slowly consuming him. Of the two recent roles though, Ray is the much more three-dimensional one, and Farrell responds with a stellar performance.
And what can you say about Gleason? After tearing up the screen as an alcoholic Irish American Boston father in the little seen 2007 American indie Black Irish, he returns here in more subdued but no less impressive fashion. The characters in McDonagh’s script were originally Londoners, not Irishmen. That change was only made once Farrell and Gleason were cast, and it is allows the actors to etch an entirely authentic feeling of odd couple camaraderie.
All of Bruges is a stage
As the story moves forward, it becomes increasingly clear that the pair have not really left that last bad hit behind them. Though eventually McDonagh shows exactly what happened in London that prompted Ken and Ray’s flight to Bruges, the emphasis is on the two trying to maintain the pretense of a normal life. Thus, the stolid Ken consults the guidebooks, while Ray pouts until the night they come across a Belgian film production that crew member Chloe (Clemence Poesy) compares to Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now. Ray is immediately smitten with Chloe and fascinated by co-star Jimmy (Jordan Prentice), a dwarf who accepts that Ray means no harm, despite the fact that nearly every word out of his mouth is insulting.
The tone of the film shifts when big boss Harry (Ralph Fiennes) comes into the picture, but even then, comedy is still present. As McDonagh has demonstrated in plays such as The Pillow Man and The Lieutenant of Inishmore, he has a gift for taking the bleakest of situations and finding humor in them, while at the same time allowing something much more poignant to eventually emerge.
‘I try to lead a good life,’ says Ken, which may seem like a contradiction for a man who kills people for a living. But vicious criminals though they may be, Ken, Ray, and Harry nevertheless maintain a code of ethics and a sense of right and wrong tailored to their circumstances.
In other words, In Bruges is neither a typical hit man movie nor a typical action film (though it is certainly punctuated by bursts of mayhem), but rather much more character-driven, well-embroidered by McDonagh's brilliant ear for the way people actually talk. Few films are this funny or this despairing and the acting is sensational all around.
Admittedly, In Bruges is a little slow in spots and a little flat in others. But overall, this is an impressive debut, thankfully free of the theatricality that one might expect from someone who has spent most of his life writing for the stage. Defiantly politically incorrect, full of scabrous humor and bloody, In Bruges will undoubtedly be offensive to some. But for fans of things like The Hit, it will be that rare animal that moves you even as you laugh so hard you cry.
