I've always had a problem with films that present criminals as protagonists. It doesn't matter what they're crimes are because by the time you've spent 2 hours in their company, you invariably end up rooting for them. The best example I can think of is Tony Soprano. No bigger thieving, murdering, unfaithful, double-crossing misogynist could you find in popular entertainment and yet the audience sees something in his humanity that makes them forgive and hope for better for the character.
Which leads me to In Bruges which gives us not one, but two Irish hitmen as the central characters. I can't say I agree with most of what I've been reading about it (relentlessly hilarious? who writes that stuff?) but I will say that it's a great big, flawed, lump of a film. Funny and sad and violent and tragic, it's got 2 great performances from Brendan Gleeson (who's never bad in anything) and Colin Farrell (who's frequently rubbish in everything, but not this).
The 2 of them are send to Bruges to hide out after a job went wrong back in London. It takes a while to find out what exactly went wrong. By the time we learn the true horror, we've already grown to like the 2 lads. Once we learn the truth though, the pair's behavior changes too. These guys aren't just a couple of chancers spending time in Belgium - they're violent, single-minded killers and you're never far from a reminder of why you don't want to love them.. So far so good but a subplot involving a girl and a dwarf actor on a film set starts to drag things off track. As they get more involved with the actor, you start to feel the contrivances adding up (how did the Canadians find Farrell on the train) and at one point near the end, the re-appearance of the dwarf lets you know where it's all going to end up..
Ralph Feinnes pops up as Harry, the foul-mouthed gangster who has sent the boys to Belgium and his performance swings between a sinister psychopath and a sensitive new man, He's good value even if mostly he's more of a reminder of (Sir) Ben Kingsley's similar bad guy in Sexy Beast.
As the film worked its way through co-incidences and surprises towards its conclusion I was actually quite excited that the filmmakers might be prepared to make the tough choices and not pander to its audience's demand. You know - happy endings and moral lessons. In fairness I won't say what actually happens at the end except to say that the almost got it right apart from the very last scenes on the film set which may have been an attempt at pathos but really just came off as a bad joke..
Still - there's plenty to enjoy. Farrell and Gleeson are terrific, the dialogue is terrific, the jokes, when they come, are funny and the insults are ferocious. In fact, it could be one of the least PC films I've seen for a long time. For all that though, there's lots of good stuff about Jesus, saints, spirituality, heaven and hell and purgatory. At one point Farrell's character compares Bruges to Hell but really I think it was more of a purgatory for both of them. A comfortable fairytale-like waiting room while their fate was decided. If that's the case, they got off lightly. If Bruges is what purgatory is like, I think we'll all be happy.
3 comments:
Urgh, I hated it. It was reasonably ok up until the confession box incident, then the arse fell out of it completely. You'd need a heart of stone not to laugh the note the little boy had in his hand. The dialogue contained some serious clunkers and shocking paddywhackery. It swung wildly between larky banter and graphic violence. And not in a way that worked, like with Tarantino. The minute dumdum bullets were mentioned, it was obvious what was coming. I was nearly sick in my handbag.
Good day to you, sir.
Tarantino? You had me until you mentioned that clown. He hasn't written a decent line of dialogue since Zed's dead.. Now, I never said it was perfect but paddywhackery seems a bit harsh. Unless you're talking about the attempts by Ralph Fiennes to whack the Paddys!
Anyway, you hate all films unless it's got crossdressers and transvestites in stockings singing German folk songs! At least this one had dwarves and prostitutes!
Can you not meet it halfway?!
Not true, I also like them filums with dogs in them.
This one had no dogs. Immediate fail.
Here, I never said Tarantino wrote good dialogue. He's just capable of swinging wildly between genres in the same scene. That is all.
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