Doesn't Work

Rating: 3/10 (31 March 2010)

I bought this DVD after viewing it once a few months back. I must admit my judgment was wrong. 'In Bruges' fails utterly to align its two conflicting urges; to be maudlin, and to be shocking. It's very amateurish. As an alternate take on the hit-man movie, it goes places the others don't, but it's not terribly interesting. It feels like a gay hit-man soap opera paid for by the Belgium tourism council (The voice-over intro which dispenses with the reason they're in Bruges in one line - before the movie even starts - is just pitiful). The two hit-men hug, they cry, they mope. I'm gay and this movie makes me squirm. It's about as much fun as watching two sulking gay guys pass the time while they iron out their relationship over a vacation. It's too elegiac and subdued to be much fun ...and too puerile to be much of a guilty pleasure.
Author McDonagh revels in foul language but doesn't find much glee in it. And the movie becomes a clunky, ever more meaningless action-movie-cliché-machine for the last half hour. Post-'Sexy Beast' villains are all the same (Here it's Raelph Fiennes). The angry midget gag is stolen from 'Lost in Oblivion.'