An Erratic Effort

Rating: 9/10 (18 August 2008)

Contract killers Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, the former a clumsy hatchling with easily ruffled feathers, the latter a calm veteran whose patience only intensifies Farrell's aggravation, are sent to the picturesque old Belgian world of Bruges by their edgy, ferocious boss Ralph Fiennes and told to await further instructions. While Gleeson peacefully absorbs the sights and historic buildings, streets and quays, Farrell is pessimistic and finicky, irritated with the lack of local nightlife. From the wild playwright of the feral, hypersensitive Lieutenant of Inishmore, this is a wonderfully enjoyable set-up for an action/comedy buddy crime film. It prepares itself with comic dynamics and quaint atmosphere, just as it markets itself in trailers, but it lets us down with an erratic handling of its tone as a jarringly dark twist in backstory unravels itself. It could have balanced its mood swings if it did not so convincingly set itself up as the duo comedy as which it was marketed.
The pace accompanies the tone in the dunce corner, the film's running time being nothing more than filled by the subplot of Farrell striking up a romance with a thieving drug dealer he meets while she is working as a PA on a movie set with a temperamental dwarf actor.
There is nothing wrong with a film that gets darker and darker as it unfolds, but In Bruges's missteps lay in its disappointing effect as well as its odd feeling of severing us from it, as despite its beautifully antiquated medieval scenery and occasional moment of fulfilling humor among a promising cast of great contemporary English actors, its struggle with its own contrivance being transparent more than the story's capacity to absorb.
By either following through with the spirit of its exposition or helming better control over its landslides into melodrama, it could have avoided being an incoherent disappointment which, if I came across it one day with a lack of better choices, I would still watch again. I sense it as a film that has the potential to grow on you despite its nearly crippling flaws.