In Bruges (2008)
Directed by Martin McDonagh
Ray and Ken, two hit men, are in Bruges, Belgium, waiting for their next mission. While they are there they have time to think and discuss their previous assignment. When the mission is revealed to Ken, it is not what he expected.
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Ray, meanwhile, is incredibly miserable, finding Bruges to be totally devoid of anything bearing even a spark of life, except for his childlike glee at watching a movie shoot, where a dwarf (Jordan Prentice) is starring in a dream sequence in an homage to Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now , while a gorgeous drug dealer named Chloë (Clémence Poésy) sells to the cast and crew.
No one is quite sure what the movie is about, but Chloë advises that "it's too strong to call it a homage to Don't Look Now."
They’re filming midgets!"), then learns the film-within-a-film is an homage to Nic Roeg’s Don’t Look Now, another film in a city with canals and dark corners, concerned with guilt and irrecoverable loss.
The film’s final joke will especially appeal to moviegoers who are fans of “Don’t Look Now,” another thriller set in a city that, like Bruges, is linked by canals (Venice).
It seems unfair to compare most any movie to Kind Hearts and Coronets and The Ladykillers or to Touch of Evil, but this one begs for such through, for example, specific reference to that latter, also 1950s Welles thriller.
The writer-director incorporates a scene from the 1958 Orson Welles classic Touch of Evil to show where he's at in terms of crime drama, meaning get ready to have the rug pulled out from under you.
But neither the dank criminality nor the clip from Touch of Evil makes In Bruges noir any more than the hints of surrealism make it Fellini.
Then Fiennes arrives and blows the film apart at the seams with an astonishingly fierce turn reminiscent of Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast.
Awaiting the call from deranged gang boss Harry (Fiennes, channelling Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast), Ken is keen to explore ‘the Venice of the North’ while Ray would rather just drink, sulk and swear.
Fiennes, though not as scary as Ben Kingsley was in “Sexy Beast,” is especially arresting and funny as the kind of crime lord who has three kids and a string of Christmas cards hung over the fireplace just so.
When Ralph Fiennes appears as Harry, it’s as though he’s swallowed the soul of Ben Kingsley’s Don Logan from Sexy Beast and added a dash more psychotic fury.
McDonagh's idea of profound profanity consists of Ray being very amused by midgets, fat Americans, and effete Canadians and Ken being sucked in by the medieval, touristy charms of sleepy Bruges; both await some word from their boss Harry (Ralph Fiennes), himself busy doing a real convincing impersonation of Ben Kingsley's insane mobster from Sexy Beast.
The star appears to be set on one-upping Ben Kingsley in "Sexy Beast," which is fine since "In Bruges" is starting to flag by this point, and Fiennes's energy gets the film over the finish line.
It seems unfair to compare most any movie to Kind Hearts and Coronets and The Ladykillers or to Touch of Evil, but this one begs for such through, for example, specific reference to that latter, also 1950s Welles thriller.
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The banter of Ray and Ken may remind you of Jules and Vincent in "Pulp Fiction," but there's an unbearable remorse behind Ray's churlishness, related to the botched hit.
In Bruges, with two killers exiled to Belgium after a badly botched London hit until the heat comes off, turns into something different from the standard-issue post-Tarantino film; it becomes the post-post Tarantino film, one where the talk talk bang bang is actually, just as it was in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, about something.
In Bruges, at its best, works like Pulp Fiction with Irish (and Belgian) accents, digressing into weird discourse and giving a bunch of actors the occasion to shine in small, peculiar roles.
It suffers from some moments of staleness, sometimes feeling like bits of "Sexy Beast" and "Pulp Fiction" forced to share a room.
Extremely violent -- almost upsettingly so -- it's the next evolutionary rung past "Pulp Fiction" and "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels."
Not since “ Pulp Fiction ” has there been a hitman duo as dynamic as Ray and Ken.
In his feature debut, "In Bruges," he has made a remarkable first film, as impressive in its own way as " House of Games ," the first film by David Mamet , who McDonagh is sometimes compared with.
The working-class Irish accents, grubby aesthetic, and surreal, dreamlike interludes inevitably recall Neil Jordan's early work, but In Bruges resembles films like The Crying Game for larger reasons: When it's funny, it's hilarious; when it's serious, it's powerful; and either way, it's an endless pleasant surprise.
Consider that old saw of a dwarf actor enlisted for a surreal dream sequence in an art film (already definitively put out to pasture by Tom DiCillo's Living in Oblivion ), here made "palatable" by having said little person be a bigoted prig given to hiring Dutch whores and frequenting Ray's drug-dealer love interest (Clémence Poésy).
This diminutive dyspeptic, Jimmy (Jordan Prentice, in a peculiar gloss on Peter Dinklage's role in Living in Oblivion) keeps himself entertained with hookers and drugs, the latter provided by Chloe (Poesy), who Ray comes to see as a kindred spirit.
As per the satire in Living in Oblivion, the scene being shot features a dwarf (Jordan Prentice) in a dream sequence.
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All of these improbable characters entertain, but seem kind of motley…until you work your way backwards from McDonagh's spectacularly fanciful ending, which reveals them all to be cogs in a clockwork mechanism (which recalls, among other things, the denouement of the cult classic The Stunt Man).
Let me try to tantalize you by saying that the movie's mood is Chekhovian, as often as not -- exquisitely delicate moments of longing -- and that I'd bet the filmmaker has seen "The Petrified Forest," the 1936 classic, set in a desert diner, with Bette Davis as Gabby, a lonely waitress who dreams of living in France.