A very well crafted dark comedy, with violence and pervasive off-color language.

Rating: Null/10 (24 September 2008)

For viewers who don't mind pervasive use of the F-word and occasionally the C-word, and also don't mind gory violence here and there, this is a very well-crafted and entertaining dark comedy.
As we learn in the extras on the DVD, Bruges, Belgium is an attractive medieval city that hasn't been featured in a movie, so this story was sort of "let's figure out how to get Bruges in the story" and it works.
Colin Farrell is Ray and Brendan Gleeson is Ken, two professional hit men who are sent to Bruges for a while to see how things cool down in London after a hit. Ken is the veteran, Ray is the new guy. Things didn't exactly go right in his first hit.
Ralph Fiennes is Harry Waters, their boss. He plays this role as a ruthless "business man" who has very strict rules about their profession.
French actress Clémence Poésy is Chloë , a local Bruges actress that Ray meets while a movie shoot was going on at night. One of the actors is an American dwarf and while his appearance seems cosmetic at first, becomes a key element in the overall resolution of the story.
SPOILERS: Ray messed up his first job, a hit on a priest, when he accidentally shot and killed an innocent young boy. Harry's motive for sending them to Bruges was to order Ken to execute Ray, because Harry, a family man with sons and daughters, has a strict rule against killing children. Meanwhile Ray is despondent over all this and is about to take his own life in a Bruges park when Ken comes upon him, ready to shoot him. Instead of simply observing, he stopped Ray from suicide then put him on a train out of the country. But Ray was brought back to Bruges to face assault charges from a few days earlier,while Harry is traveling to Bruges to deal with Ken for not snuffing Ray. The whole thing comes to a climax in a town square at night, when Harry chases down Ray and shoots him he also accidentally kills the dwarf and, thinking he killed a child, put his gun in his own mouth and killed himself. As the movie ends, Ray is being transported to a hospital with grave wounds and we hear his thoughts "hoping that he survives", but we don't find out if he does.