A sight worth seeing!

Rating: 8/10 (8 February 2008)

"If I'd grown up on a farm and was retarded, Bruges might impress me, but I didn't, so it doesn't." I've never grown up, certainly not on a farm, and, as for the other criterion, it is best left to others to judge, but I was impressed by "In Bruges!" The sights of the Belgian town itself would make an attractive documentary and they serve as a perfect counterpoint to the sardonic humor that emanates from the characters from beginning to end of this film.
When the "frozen mist" appears over the town, it becomes a "fairy tale" landscape, well, a fairy tale that includes hit men in repose; a girl on a film crew who sells a pharmacopoeia of drugs when not shilling for a skinhead who shoots blanks, figuratively and literally, fat Americans; boorish Canadians; rumors of a midget - excuse me - "dwarf" race war; very funny and very dark casual conversations; a horror in flashback and one of the bloodiest and most ethical shootouts to ever conclude a movie.
Colin Farrell apparently has the current franchise on guilt-ridden, semi-clueless and almost entirely heedless characters who inadvertently plague their partners given his recent showing in Woody Allen's "Cassandra's Dream." In the previous film his character treads water barely keeping his guilt afloat in the pervasive gloom while in "Bruges" he swims with it on his back through dark and unforced humor and regret. Brendan Gleason provides a sturdy framework for the plot and the revelation of character. Clearly, it is one of his best performances - a hit-man with the face and fidelity of an old knight errant. Ralph Fiennes also sets the perfect tone as the criminal nobleman to whom Farrell and Gleason both owe allegiance and must confront with reluctant defiance. The erstwhile Fleur Delacour of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," Clémence Poésy, plays the drug dealer/mugger assistant with a (sort of) heart of gold (And, no, for once, that's not Peter Dinklage, the hardest working little person in movies, it's Jordan Prentice.) This appears to be director/writer's Martin McDonagh's full-length feature debut. Kudos!