A well-intentioned genre experiment with mixed results

Rating: 9/10 (31 July 2008)

"In Bruges" is a very interesting film, and as dull as that term is, it truly feels most appropriate. Writer/director Martin McDonagh's first feature length film is somewhere between a European crime comedy reminiscent of Guy Ritchie's work and an existential drama. Sometimes this works and sometimes it honestly becomes schizophrenic: a marketing nightmare. I'm not surprised it was released in the off-month of February as a result. The film is an experiment that pays dividends in ways, mostly in humor and characters, and feels curious and strange in others when it comes to the more dramatic moments. As with most experiments, it's the kind of film that some people won't be able to stand and some will flat out love.
The film starts off as it was marketed, as the off-beat Euro crime comedy. The premise is simply that Ray (Farrell) and Ken (Gleeson) are hit men and their boss (Fiennes, who doesn't appear until an hour into the film) tells them to lay low in Bruges and await further instructions. The city thus plays a vital role in the plot and especially in the film's deeper meaning. The gentle balance between the humor and the themes of personal inner turmoil is where the film goes schizophrenic. The first hour is mostly all lighter and the second is substantially darker. The humor exists throughout though it grows darker as the plot does.
I found the humor to be the greatest strength of the film. Each joke is sort of a swift punch in the gut: you laugh hard very quickly but it doesn't linger for long. The characters were obviously instrumental in this. Though I felt Farrell's characters was a bit too all over the place, he was really quite excellent at showing his inner monologue whenever McDonagh had a shot exclusively of him with no actual action or dialogue. Gleeson is also a terrific supporting actor and brings an interest to Ken though he's not the funnier of the two. Fiennes, though his time brief, does as he always does in sucking your attention toward him. When he plays an antagonist, he always steals moments in films and this really isn't an exception.
The hidden gem of this movie is the notion of Bruges as purgatory or perhaps even hell and the way it psychologically affects the characters and their thoughts about life and death. How much you like "In Bruges" will pretty much depend on how well you make that connection and it resonates with you. It's easy to get caught up in only the humor of it the film and totally miss all that, or in some cases that thematic content simply is too subtle. In general, I felt that because it set the tone early on as an only minimally dark crime comedy, those themes fell short with me. So while I think "In Bruges" is one of the more interesting films I've seen lately, it didn't click with me all the way.