Different Kind of Hit Man Movie

Rating: 8/10 (19 November 2009)

Every budding film maker seems to cut his feature teeth on a hit man movie. In fact, I've always thought hit man movies should be in their own genre. Instead, they fall into the action/adventure category.
In Bruges (pronounced like the sled, luge) is it's own kind of hit man movie. It breaks new ground in much the same way Pulp Fiction and The Professional did. But while Pulp Fiction is about cartoon characters who love to act 'cool' and hear themselves talk (can you tell I'm not a Tarantino fan?), and The Professional relies on the Lolita effect and blatant sentimentality for it's characterization (it still worked for me), In Bruges is filled with real humanity and real drama. It takes very, very few cheap shots, and those it does take seem to be the film maker winking at classic cinematic conventions.
This doesn't mean the story is completely free of plot devices and such. There are McGuffins and other devices in all hit man movies. In Pulp Fiction it was the briefcase, in The Professional, the plant, to name just two. I won't give away the device in In Bruges but you'll know it immediately when you see it.
The two main characters, played by Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, the hit men, are not meant to be likable, but we empathize with them because of each one's emotional struggle. I like this about the movie. Bad characters doing bad things, and yet we feel for them because of what they're going through. However, not all the characters have the same emotional wallop. The two female characters aren't as deep, and one of them, Chloe, isn't the least bit likable to this viewer. Also, the character Harry, played by Ralph Fiennes, suffers slightly from a lack of screen time.
I guessed the final resolution about five minutes before it arrived, and you'll probably see it coming, too. That's OK. You don't have to be entirely surprised by this movie to appreciate it.
Lastly, I'm glad the writer/director edited out the scenes on the disk labeled "deleted scenes." The movie was much better leaving the audience to fill in the blanks on the individual back stories.