Freak Show

Rating: 5/10 (16 March 2008)

Two hit men wile away their days in Bruges waiting for...I forget. Bored, after the initial sight-seeing device wears thin, the duo together, and separately, take some wild rides with a carnival of far-fetched, quirk-laden characters: a supermodel apparition-cum-reality slut, a coked-up racist dwarf, a Housemother-Mary in her third trimester, bi-polar drug-dealers, etc. It's as though the writer of this mess believes that comedy requires caricature, great dialog can only be comprised of four-letter words, and modern storytelling means stringing together 100+ minutes of fun-house non sequiturs in order to keep an audience on its toes. Colin Farrel puts in his worst performance to date: indicating, forcing, and making faces to get his motivations across. Obviously the director is influenced by the Tarantino school of film-making, but sadly he missed the class on thematic points and the protagonist's journey, focusing on the flashy, outrageous, and cartoon-like aspects of recess. The writer/director claims he got the idea when he, himself, visited Bruges-- he found the city so "Gothic and beautiful," but then how bored he was after only two days, and how he started to want to "find a girl and get drunk," etc. Isn't that inspiring? To think that someone's boredom can become the main plot line of a movie. The oft repeated central question of the movie seems to be "Why are we in Bruges?" Why indeed? Very thought-provoking...