Windy City Media Group review 07.02.08 (FINALLY!)
Finally something refreshing!
Source: Windy City Media Group
Brendan Gleeson is perhaps best known to movies audiences portraying “Mad Eye” Moony in the Harry Potter series. He's one of those character actors that can save a bad movie and make a good one great. He's so good ( he's like an Irish Spencer Tracy ) , his great skill almost goes unnoticed. When he is given a starring role, as in the new black comedy In Bruges, the effect of his work is deeply satisfying. Matched up with co-star ( and marquee draw ) Colin Farrell, who is also gifted ( but in a more showy way ) , the duo enact a new variation on the buddy picture—one with a soul.
Gleeson and Farrell play Ken and Ray, two hitmen who have been ordered by their boss, Harry ( Ralph Fiennes ) , to lay low in Bruges, Belgium, until he phones up with orders for their next target. Ken, a quiet, cultured man, is immediately in his glory, taking in the picture postcard town; however, Ray, his much younger counterpoint who is new to the job, is bored stiff—until he spots a dwarf named Jimmy ( Jordan Prentice ) making a movie and one of the townspeople, Chloë ( Clémence Poésy ) , watching the filming. The two pursue their separate agendas until the call from the dreaded Harry comes.
Harry is as frightening and monstrous a figure as Don Logan, the lethal killer played by Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast. Fiennes brings the same insane intensity to Harry that Kingsley brought to his role. ( The two could be brothers. ) Harry has the same barely contained, purposeful stride—like a walking shark—so dangerous that others instinctively know to get out of his way.
When Harry shows up, the picture shifts into high gear and changes from a black comedy into a treatise on honor and redemption accompanied by several violent set pieces. It's no surprise to find, given the movie's seesawing between poetic despair and brutal in-your-face violence, that it's been written and directed by Martin McDonagh, who has been dubbed the “Irish Tarantino.” McDonagh won international acclaim for his plays The Beauty Queen of Leenane, The Pillowman and others, and he won an Oscar for his first film, a short entitled Six Shooter ( which also starred Gleeson ) . In Bruges is his feature debut. It's another one of those improbable but deftly entertaining hitmen pictures. Like The Matador, Grosse Point Blank and many others in the genre, the character of the assassin ( s ) —so hard to comprehend even in our narcissistic, mean-spirited culture—is examined, sometimes explained and, once in a while, redeemed.
Like the best of McDonagh's work, In Bruges has unforgettable moments of depth, lots of pitch-black humor and outrageous, unbelievable twists that are nevertheless quite entertaining. In addition, Gleeson and Farrell ( whose relationship is more father-son than buddy-buddy, to be honest ) jointly deliver an acting knockout.
