A Blot on a beautiful town.

Rating: 3/10 (30 September 2008)

Director/writer Martin McDonagh's stunningly incredulous piece of sentimental claptrap involving touchy feely hit men and highly principled mob kingpins is all location, location. I've never visited a lovelier large town and this tale about a lethal Laurel and Hardy team is an insult to it's name.
Ken and Ray have just performed a sloppy hit in which a priest and a young child are the victims. They're ordered to hideout in Bruges until they get further word from their boss Harry Waters. When orders do arrive they are for Ken to kill Ray. Veteran hit man Ken however goes soft for cuddly developmentally delayed Ray and can't go through with it. This is where things become absurdly unrealistic.
McDonagh is well schooled in Coen and Tarantino but there are only hints of the former and an excess of the latter. There's some nice comic dialogue in the early going that balances well with the violent moments but after forty-five minutes things become convoluted and insipid as kingpin Waters takes it upon himself to go to Bruges alone assaulting citizens and running through town shooting away at Ray since from the looks of things the entire Bruges police force is on Christmas Holidays and it's left up to a pregnant hotel keeper to stand between gun toting thugs. Even though Ray and Ken go soft they are physically resilient to the point of super hero status. Ken already shot and bleeding profusely falls from a roughly three hundred foot church tower splatters on the cobblestones but still manages to warn Ray whose tough hide takes four shots to the trunk of his body but is gamely hanging on at the end. A supporting cast of ugly North Americans, a dwarf, a wimpy skin head, and a misunderstood drug dealing hooker, thief whose a sweet girl at heart are erratically developed and manage only to contribute to the films torpid pace.
McDonagh spills blood liberally mixing it with heavy handed symbolism but it's pure comic book by the last half so it's hard to take the plot or the characters seriously. Colin Farrell's Ray has the makings of a fascinating and absorbing character in the films early moments but soon dilutes the suspense with a more impish than tortured approach that just repeats itself. As Ken, Brendan Gleeson displays a world weary fatigue with a convincing glum resignation that makes him the film's most interesting character before going soft and doing the inane swan dive from the church. Ralph Fiennes is completely over the top as the illogical mob boss.
McDonagh does a fine job of filming Bruges, particularly at night but this is supposed to be more than a travelogue and his imagery and editing is unimaginative. In Bruges is one botched collage of poorly woven ideas, incoherently realized by a juvenile imagination. They should not have let McDonagh and company across the town line.