interesting, but feels more like an intellectual exercise than a story

Rating: 7/10 (4 August 2018)

Do really awful people have a strict moral code and deep conscience? I'm going to guess no, but In Bruges suggests writer/director Martin McDonagh might disagree.
In Bruges begins with two guys checking into a hotel in Bruges. They have come to wait an unspecified amount of time to speak to someone. They go sightseeing. One man loves Bruges, the other finds it tedious.
This is maybe the first third of the movie, which is sometimes amusing but doesn't give you much to hold onto. Then a flurry of things happen and an elaborate, ingenious story kicks in. And that part involves terrible people being shockingly full of scruples.
The film is very well acted and generally amusing with some dark and occasionally suspenseful moments, yet I was never fully drawn in. The ingenuity of the story and moral code of the protagonists felt like dramatic devices rather than something that comes from real life experience. A false clever plot and unlikely characters is not inherently unworkable, and I think the problem is less the script than that McDonagh can't quite figure out how to flesh that script with human complexity (something he successfully did in "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.")
I enjoyed this well enough, but I wouldn't say it's something you should seek out.