Big disappointment

Rating: 2/10 (26 January 2009)

"In Bruges" was a huge disappointment, especially considering the unending praise this movie has been drawing from critics and viewers alike.
I thought it was very false, and contrived.
The movie centers on two professional hit men from Ireland, rationalising what they do for a living, i.e. killing people for money, by telling themselves that most of the people they've killed weren't very nice anyway, so kinda had it coming/only got their comeuppance. At the same time, they do of course have very appropriate pangs of conscience about the few people they killed who may not have deserved it. Generally speaking I don't care for movies about contract killers ("Grosse Pointe Blank" being another example) which depict their protagonists in a naïve, romanticised way: Yeah, here are these two paid killers, but don't be put off by what they do for a living, they're really quite friendly people, so long as you don't end up on their hitlist! In fact, even if you do end up on their hitlist, they are still going to be friendly to you, although they are going to have to kill you, but that's strictly business, nothing personal! There is a scene where one of them relates how he had to kill a man he wasn't paid to kill  the man just stood in his way trying to protect a relative who was on the assassin's hitlist. The scene turns into a mock argument about whether or not he shot the man in self-defence, with the two talking at cross points, or rather Colin Farrell's character pretending to be too obtuse to see the other guy's point. The scene is clearly meant to be hilarious. I had no inclination to smile.
One thing I am really sick of in English-language movies (not only this one) is all these Continental European supporting characters with absolutely flawless English, in this case Colin Farrell's enormously annoying Belgian love interest. Not only do they never make any mistakes, they speak the language so brilliantly that they can hold their own in witty conversations with native speakers, firing from a sparkling repartee that includes puns on English words that I assume wouldn't work in their own language. How about making a movie for a change in which Belgians, Germans, Italians, etc. speak English the way they really do, i.e. BADLY? Of course, no explanation is ever given why they speak English so well. Usually one of the native-speaker characters just makes a stupid surprised face and says something like "Wow, your English is really good", and that's that. On to the next pun.
Another thing I am tired of is all these regular people with superhuman courage in the face of extreme danger, in this case an extremely pregnant(!) hotel owner who never wavers for a second as she stands in the way of an armed madman, in defiance of the danger to her own life and that of her unborn baby. Right. If there was anybody in the real world who would really act this way, it wouldn't be courageous, it would be plain stupid.
There is one scene of such colossal absurdity, I can't help but relate it. A man is first shot in the leg, then he hobbles down the winding stairs of a bell tower (albeit propped up by another man, to be fair), then he gets shot into the throat or maybe shoulder, then he drags himself back up the same winding staircase (this time without the help of the other man), then  once at the top  he drags himself onto the parapet of said bell tower to stand erect(!) upon the parapet before hurling himself down. There is a massive cloud of blood as he hits the ground. I won't reveal what happens next, let's just say the guy is of an impressive resilience.
Almost as absurd is the ending which has the five leads all in the same place at the same time, so the movie can conveniently deal with them one after the other until all emotional and outer conflicts are neatly resolved, in a way that could only have been contrived by a director who comes from theater.
I am giving this movie a liberal 2 out of 10 stars, the lowest rating I have given any movie since Terry Gilliam's "Brothers Grimm". If you want to see an honest movie about a paid assassin, watch the original "Day of the Jackal". That movie too centered on a man who killed for a living, but unlike "In Bruges" it never tries to coax the viewer into sympathising with its protagonist. Instead, it deals with its subject matter-of-factly: he's a contract killer, ruthless and despicable.