I feel I want to go to Bruges...

Rating: 10/10 (18 July 2008)

Pick some excellent actors, add a superb and unpredictable plot, mix in some believable dialogue and odd, yet completely realistic situations, and then set almost the entire film in a haunting yet mesmerising location most of us have never been to, some never even heard of.
The film "In Brujes" is many things. It is extremely endearing, gory, violent, funny, tender, but most of all it is a compellingly human film. It charts a handful of days in the lives of two hired killers, after a job in London goes wrong, and they are sent to "cool off and lay low" in a rather unexpected place: Brujes, Belgium.
The reason they are sent there becomes apparent once we have already been drawn well into the plot, and have developed empathy for the main characters, which makes everything that happens to them in the final act all the more resonant.
Without spoiling it, as I believe this film is one of the least predictable ones I have seen in years, the reason they are sent to this little-known place (in Cinema, at least) partly involves the fact that "Brujes is like a fairy tale city".
Since I dearly treasure the feeling of going to the cinema and being pleasantly surprised throughout the length of a film, both by its quality acting and original plot, I shall simply tell you that I was amused and laughed throughout, I felt pity, I felt pain, I felt hope. I felt.
And I now feel I want to see this city. Because both it, and this film, have something of a fairytale about them. Honestly, miss this gem at your peril.