A decent film with some problems

Rating: 7/10 (9 March 2008)

I have to agree with most of the main points in the positive reviews of this film: The script is great, Brendan Gleason, Colin Farrell, Ralph Feinnes and the Flemish actors are excellent, and the setting is used well. The Burghers of Bruges can expect a spike in the numbers of large, overweight, English-speaking American tourists, thanks to this film. But the thumbs-down reviewers also make good points: Colin Farrell mugs a lot; the arc of the story is predictable once the boss (Fiennes) places his call to Ken (Gleason); the climax at the tower is hard to believe; The bullet-riddled ending is equally hard to believe, and reminiscent of the ending of The Departed (equally unconvincing). The film is full of quotes and paraphrases from past films: a medieval square in Bruges' Altstaat at night comes straight out of The Third Man; One character deliberately shoots another in the thigh, reminiscent of Brendan Gleason's signature work, The General; The final scene is a paraphrase of the final scene of the Coen brothers' Blood Simple.
There's a point that jumped out at me that hasn't been raised yet-there are two or three gags at the expense of Americans in the film. That wouldn't really be objectionable but for the fact that some of the gags are conflated with racism. I can't object to jokes at our expense ( I am an American), since there's a germ of truth in every one of them. The racism, however, is gratuitous. We don't need this movie to tell us it's a problem. Speaking-again, as an American, racism-in-America cropped up enough times in this film to draw my attention away from the story itself. After the first two or three mentions, I was sitting there waiting for the next anti-American racist gag.
So, on the whole I scored the film 9 for production values, and 4 for..what?, Rudeness? Resulting in a 7 star rating.