melancholy drama-comedy of career criminals in moral jeopardy

Rating: 9/10 (9 March 2008)

Playwright McDonaugh's debut feature, In Bruges, works only up to a point as a crime comedy (however considering up to what point is quite remarkable), featuring a supporting cast ranging from quirky Euro-trash and plain old jolly eccentrics. But as a moral drama, it's almost as top of the pops one could ask for. The trailer didn't make it seem as such, then again it is hard to express the kind of conundrum that the main characters get themselves into while also appealing to a base of fans that love quip-type one liners (i.e. "You're a bunch of bleeping elephants!" or "If I was retarded, or grew up on a farm, Bruges would impress me, but I didn't, so I'm not impressed.")
When In Bruges is at its best- and until its self-consciously symbolic touches in the last five minutes it usually is at its "Best" whatever that means- it expresses what I love seeing in films about career criminals: the total inner turmoil of what was done coming back to haunt the person. If it's true that no good deed goes unpunished, the same would probably go for bad deeds in the world of In Bruges, where the atmosphere of the practically medieval city is, the character Ken observes, like "a fairytale", and a sharp contrast to the dark side pervading Ken, Ray, and Harry.
The basic thrust of the plot is that Ray (half wise-ass womanizer and half half-suicidal played by Farrell) did a job back in London, a murder, which went horribly wrong in just one misstep (I won't reveal it here, though I should, except to say that it's one of those cardinal rules career criminals/hit men have to stick to), and so he and the older, less cynical Ken (Gleeson, who seems to be one of the most honest looking types in the character actor world, a spot-on casting choice), are sent to Bruges to receive more instructions. But those instructions, sent by the easily angered Harry (Ralph Fiennes, doing almost a hilarious imitation of Kingskey in Sexy Beast), aren't followed through, and then some manner of chaos ensues.
Here and there McDonaugh takes what appears to be a lackadaisical attitude to the characters in this otherwise tense and uncertain fatalistic situation, as if an odd-matched comic duo are in a place one likes and one only can stand for mocking midgets (scuse me, dwarfs) in movie-making and hitting on the one hot girl in all of Bruges. But it's such a strange form that McDonaugh is working with here, with its mix of tones that it suddenly feels, in the context of the slightly bizarre and chilling circumstances, truthful. It goes without saying the cast helps give the material a boost, and that McDonaugh doesn't throw too many out-of-left-field curve balls with the plot. If he does, it's not of the sort we know we're usually hitting in this kind of crime story loaded with gallows humor and Catholic redemption mini-saga.
In short, if I were a bloke in Britain or a fella in Dublin, or a dupe in Bruges, as a writer this is the kind of stuff I'd immediately try to go for. It's smart, serious, mature genre work that relies on just enough blood-shed and violence and trauma to haunt its audience proper, and do its duty to supply another batch of wonderfully off-kilter 'comedy' scenes for fans of British gangster flicks. That this is nowhere near as shallow as a Ritchie pic goes without saying.