Doesn't quite work but is still darkly comic and entertaining

Rating: Null/10 (4 January 2009)

Hit men Ray and Ken have been sent to Bruges to lay low for a while and await a call from their criminal boss Harry. They are meant to stay near the phone in the evening and are free to sightsee during the day but Ray is less than impressed with his surroundings even in Ken is soaking it all in. While they await further instructions, the two talk over things, travel round the city, get involved with some of the cast and crew making a film and generally fail to stay out of trouble or maintain a low profile.
In Bruges was sold as a hilarious comedy and this in combination with the names involved made me want to check it out. It was mis-sold but this is not to say that the film still wasn't pretty good. It is occasionally laugh-out-loud funny but it is only occasionally and mostly the tone is very black, with humour coming laced with violence. On the flip of this approach though the film does still have a plot where the characters are in danger and it does still expect to pack a narrative and emotional punch. Both sides are OK but they do not work as well together as I would have liked. When it is funny the film is brilliant, with great lines juxtapositioning with the often violent situations they are in and this darkly comic stuff really appealed to me but the downside is that it does make it harder to suddenly launch into a more dramatic film where we really need to feel the danger. This is difficult given we have just watched danger being dealt with in a comic and offhand way, so my heart was not really in it in the later stages of the film.
When the violence is handled with humour, it doesn't bother me much but the gore and the impact of the violence is pretty harshly depicted, which again makes the film a little hard to "enjoy" in the way I was in the first half of the movie. Really it needed to go one way or the other for definite so that there was an overall direction for the film because, as it is, it does feel like two different approaches with a reasonable blend in the middle. The cast make it work though and you can see from their performances that they know they are the whole show here. Farrell impressed me with his comedy abilities and although he did remind me of Father Dougal at times, he is really good here, getting laughs and being able to deliver sudden brutality. Gleeson is equally good and the film is great when the two of them are allowed to play off one another. Fiennes helps the latter stages of the film work because his performance is strong  injecting dark energy into the film just when it needed something to carry it across the end. Reuten and Prentice are OK but are very much secondary to the main three.
Overall In Bruges is not a brilliant or hilarious film but it does more or less work and entertain throughout. The darker it gets the less it works and the ending is not as strong as the first half of the film but mostly the darkly comic and brutal material does work thanks to the really good playing from the three main actors, while Bruges itself provides a picturesque background. Come to it with low expectations and it will probably charm and engage you but it is not quite as good as some would have you believe.