An example of perfect dark comedy.

Rating: 10/10 (28 May 2013)

I remember getting really angry at an article in either Total Film or Empire that featured a list of films that were supposedly Quentin Tarantino ripoffs. As you can probably guess, In Bruges was on said list. Being of the opinion that In Bruges is better than any Tarantino movie (and significantly better than any one that isn't Inglorious Basterds) this really annoyed me. The list seemed to be based on the idea that if a movie features swearing, violence and a lot of dialogue then it must be a Tarantino-wannabe. That's stupid for a number of reasons, the main one of which being that swearing, violence and dialogue-heavy scripts were not invented by a guy whose first film came out in 1992. Another reason is that whilst Tarantino's films often seem so desperate to adhere to the boundaries they've set themselves, they often suffer as a result. Without these boundaries, In Bruges is a very different, and much better movie.
Obviously it's funny. That doesn't need to be said. Look at literally any review of this movie and people will tell you how hilarious and quotable this movie is. I think one of the things that's most impressive though is how ballsy it is when it comes to rooting the characters in real emotion. Every character in the movie spends at least 95% of it's runtime being super depressed. In addition to this, half the scenes end on a depressing silence, rather than a witty punchline. The combination of these two elements, along with the obvious choices of music and setting, add up to a film that is evidently trying, and succeeding, to make the audience do more than laugh. It's an incredibly courageous move on the part of Martin McDonagh, a man who I'd name as the greatest writer living today. The trailers advertise In Bruges as some kind of wacky gangster comedy, but in fact it's something much more raw and deep than that, delving into much more complex themes than any other comedy I've seen.
But that's not all. This is my second favourite movie of all-time so obviously I'm going to be enamoured with pretty much every frame of it. From the perfectly-maudlin intro to the script letting the jokes come naturally instead of forcing contrived situations down the viewers throat. In fact, another thing, I love the way that there's not a single bit of fat on the script. By this I mean that every single scene is intrinsic to a full understanding of the final scenes of the film, both in terms of understanding the plot and to a greater extent reading the thematic elements of the movie. Credit goes to the editors for this more than McDonagh, as the DVD shows around 30 minutes of deleted/extended scenes. I feel like In Bruges is a pretty much perfect movie, in that it's genuinely funny, smart, deep, imaginative, well-acted, and so many more things that I've forgotten to mention. So yeah, screw anyone who would even consider this to be in any way Tarantino-inspired.