Globe and Mail Review 19.01.08
Source: Globe and Mail
Opening night film
Director-screenwriter Martin McDonagh, born in London to Irish parents, is best known as a playwright, a two-time winner of theatre's Olivier Award for The Pillowman and The Lieutenant of Innismore - and a four-time Tony nominee. In 2006, he added an Academy Award to his credits for his short, live-action film Six Shooter. In Bruges is his feature-film debut, a black comic tale of two gunmen who have been sent to the fairy-tale Belgian city of Bruges to await orders after a botched killing in London.
Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleason appear to draw on the model of the comedy team of Laurel and Hardy, with Farrell as the anxious, not-so-bright apprentice and Gleeson as his composed, epicurean partner, as they await orders from their irascible overseer (Ralph Fiennes). McDonagh's dialogue is consistently clever, though his pacing is a problem, as is his weakness for corny surrealism: Peter Dinklage appears as a snide dwarf American movie actor; doing a knock-off version of Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Back in a set designed to look like a Hieronymus Bosch painting.
In Bruges is scheduled for theatrical release in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver on Feb. 8.
