Seven Psychopaths (2012)
Directed by Martin McDonagh
A struggling screenwriter inadvertently becomes entangled in the Los Angeles criminal underworld after his oddball friends kidnap a gangster's beloved Shih Tzu.
38 connections found
View:
38 films that influenced Seven Psychopaths
What critics say influenced Seven Psychopaths
Writer-director Martin McDonagh's followup to his more cohesive In Bruges is a middle finger to cliches Pulp Fiction wrought, while garishly reveling in the same hyper-ironic, pop referenced ultraviolence it lampoons.
It’s not unlike “Adaptation” meets “Pulp Fiction.”
In the wake of Pulp Fiction 's release, there were a lot of copycats - some good, some bad, but all seeking to emulate the rhythms of Tarantino's seminal motion picture.
If he did, I doubt many of them operated in the sort of black comedy mode McDonagh is striving for, although some of them easily could have been imitating the thugs in Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction."
And so the gleefully violent, comically profane Seven Psychopaths represents a sort of evolutionary step from Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, but without that picture's coked-up energy and propulsive narrative drive.
Sam Rockwell is the agent of chaos as Marty's pal and wannabe actor Billy Bickle (an oblique reference to Taxi Driver?) who kidnaps a dog to claim the reward, unaware that the pooch belongs to Charlie.
Inspiration arrives like spurts of blood once Marty starts hanging around less with his girlfriend Kaya (a wasted Abbie Cornish) and more with his best friend Billy Bickle (Sam Rockwell), who, like his Travis Bickle namesake in Taxi Driver, has several screws loose.
At one point, Billy even does a quick “You talkin’ to me?”-type Taxi Driver riff.
Marty's best friend is Billy Bickle ( Sam Rockwell ), and if his last name is the same as the hero in Marty Scorsese's " Taxi Driver ," I leave that for you to puzzle out.
The picture is smart enough to work on multiple levels: as a witty salute to masculine '70s cinema ("Marty" can stand for Marty Scorsese as well as Martin McDonagh), as a deconstruction of same (Rockwell's "Bickle," alluding to De Niro's psychopath in Scorsese's Taxi Driver, symbolically embodies the eager violence Marty needs for a commercially successful script), and as an existential consideration of the role of self-expression in ascribing meaning to life, including the question of artistic "responsibility."
The stories are enacted on screen in the minds of Marty, Billy and Hans, recalling such films of the 1960s as Alain Robbe-Grillet's Trans-Europ-Express and Agnès Varda's Les créatures, where what we see are the books the central characters are writing, rewriting and tinkering with.
Tarantino's breakthrough reimagining of the crime movie has inspired countless would-be successors, some rather good (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Go), others borderline unwatchable (A Life Less Ordinary, Lucky Number Slevin, Smokin' Aces).
Tonally, it’s a bit like Danny Boyle ’s misguided “A Life Less Ordinary” — with a promising British talent lured by America who is too eager to please and finds himself in way over his head.
Advertisement
In terms of pacing and structure, it feels like Matthew Vaughn’s “Layer Cake,” and with its blending of reality and screenplay-in-progress it reminds you a bit of Spike Jonze’ “Adaptation.”
The Thomas Crown Affair (1968/1999) You make the call: Steamy Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway in the 1968 original or suave Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo in the 1999 remake.
It’s an old-fashioned John Huston caper film extended to sulfurous comedy — from Beat the Devil to Meet the Devil.
Tarantino's breakthrough reimagining of the crime movie has inspired countless would-be successors, some rather good (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Go), others borderline unwatchable (A Life Less Ordinary, Lucky Number Slevin, Smokin' Aces).
But as long as you remember that this is just a “Smokin’ Aces” for the literary-minded you’ll be fine.
Advertisement
McDonagh also tips his hat to Japanese crime maestro Takeshi Kitano by showing Marty and Billy watching a scene from Violent Cop.
Even so, the biggest aftershocks on display might be of Wes Craven’s “Scream.”
Namely, the pop-postmodern trick that probably precedes Scream but whose popularity owes to that film, of filmmakers committing all sorts of dramatic sins, from the niggling annoyance to the severe, even crippling flaw, and then thinking they can get away with those sins by pointing out what they've done and giggling and saying, "Isn't everything we're doing so completely stupid?
…and Scream) in which the characters basically comment on the film-within-a-film and how its circumstances relate to the real world — in this instance, that includes Marty employing the characters he meets into the script he's writing (which of course is also McDonagh's script for the movie we paid to watch) and also a running discussion of making violent movies with peaceful ideals.