Effin' Ineffable Bruges

In my usual way of being a bad, even inept, fan/potential stalker of hot celebs, I have seen very few movies with Colin Farrell even though he always gives me the vapors. In fact, until this weekend, out of the 20 movies he's made so far, I'd only seen two: Minority Report, in which he has a supporting role, and the indie movie Home at the End of the World, which I can barely remember. But after seen In Burges, I'm gonna try to be a committed fan: I've got Cassandra's Dream on hold at the library, and I may even put the supposedly dreadful Alexander on our Netflix queue.

In Burges, written and directed by acclaimed Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, follows two hit men (Farrell and Brendan Gleeson) who, after they bungle the killing of a priest (they get him, but Farrell accidently kills a small child at the same time), are sent by their boss (Ralph Finnes) to hide out in Bruges while things cool down. This film has been described as a crime thriller or an action movie, and elements of those genres are certainly present, but it's better described as a dark comedy of character, as for the bulk of the film, we simply follow the thugish but dim Farrell (who we come to care for when we see how the death of the child has affected him) and the older, smarter Gleeson (who has a past tragedy of his own still haunting him) as they sightsee, get bored, pick up girls, do drugs, get bored again, etc.

The main running gag is that Gleeson keeps trying to get Farrell to appreciate the rustic beauty of the medieval town, but Farrell keeps getting distracted by, not only girls and drugs, but by a film crew shooting in town, and specifically by a dwarf actor from the film (Jordan Prentice), who, in a very clever plot twist, plays a surprisingly crucial role in the film's bloody climax. Eventually, the meandering narrative gets more sharply focused when Finnes, via phone, orders Gleeson to kill Farrell for his blunder. Gleeson can't quite bring himself to do it (in a wonderful scene which could be a textbook example of "black comedy"), and things build to a climax when Finnes comes to town to check up on things.

The supporting characters include a lovely young drug-dealer who Farrell is taken with, her inept thug of a boyfriend, and an even lovelier young woman who runs the hotel where Farrell and Gleeson are staying--normally, the fact that she's pregnant would exempt her from physical harm, but in a movie like this that keeps you off-balance, you can never be sure. Farrell is quite handsome, sometimes looking goofy on the edge of insane, and gives an excellent full-blooded performance while things real. Gleeson does a nice job fleshing out a character who seems as though he didn't amount to much on the page. I thought Finnes was OK, though many critics really like him here, I suspect mostly because he's playing against type. I liked this movie more than I thought I would. The movie is filled with hysterically funny vulgar dialogue (you might start to think that the name of the town is "F**kin' Bruges") and has a nicely ambigious ending. And the town manages to seem both like a precious fairy-tale place and like a shithole (in the slighly less vulgar words of Farrell). Recommended.