In Bruges

[orpheum]

Anyone see this and was it any good?

[wearysloth]

Very funny. Very profane. Very violent.

My only gripe is that there seems to be two films in there and one, the story of two Irishmen afloat in a foreign land is much better than the gangster one. Cautiously Recommended...

[Moxx of Balhoom]

I enjoyed it, probably my favourite British film so far this year, great performances from both Farrell and Gleason, it does veer off in a different direction in the second half true, but not as noticeably as The Bank Job or The Cottage, both of which swung from light comedy to dark violence quite sharply, I feel that even during the darker second half In Brugges retained it's sense of humour - and for my money any film with Peter Dinklage has to be worth seeing. (well except maybe Underdog)

[orpheum]

Well i thought that it was truly awful and walked out before the end.Quite frankly at times i just could not make out what the two leads were saying,thus making it very difficult to follow the plot.I found much of the second half ridiculous.The only good part were the views of Bruges

[Lord Brett]

I thought it was excellent. Just the sort of smaller scale movie which is about dialogue and acting that is too often chased off the multiplex screens by 50 screenings a day of Iron Man or Indiana Jones.

[orpheum]

If you cant understand the dialogue it is all rather meaningless!

[Hugo]

"My only gripe is that there seems to be two films in there and one, the story of two Irishmen afloat in a foreign land is much better than the gangster one".



Yes, there are two films here. The one about the relationship between the two hitmen is an unacknowledged reworking of Harold Pinter's one act play The Dumb Waiter. I'm surprised that Pinter didn't sue for royalties.

[blacknorth]

Yes, there are two films here. The one about the relationship between the two hitmen is an unacknowledged reworking of Harold Pinter's one act play The Dumb Waiter. I'm surprised that Pinter didn't sue for royalties.

You think there'll be royalties then?

[Captain Casper]

One of the best films I've seen in years. Normally, the thought of Colin Farrell makes me hit the eject button, but he was superb. Both he and Gleeson should be vying for an award or two for this.



Dark, funny and shocking in places, I recommend it highly.

[RAREFILMFINDER]

Middle of the road film well made and acting fine.6/10

Dont pay top money ,wait a bit.





lenny

[christoph404]

I liked this a lot, Colin Farrell is excellent in it, he's a pretty good actor when he wants to be and I was totally drawn by the whole thing, I think its a rare example of a low key film that relies on character development and good script rather overblown effects and emotions. Actually I caught this film on a long haul flight with poor sound quality but I still managed to understand what the two main characters were saying, I guess the Irish accents are quite strong but are they really so difficult to understand? And I didn't realise Ralph Fiennes was in it till he appeared on screen, at first we hear his voice on the phone and I thought he sounded exactly like Don Logan from "Sexy Beast" and I thought that was who it was going to be!

[DB7]

Watched it again the other night and my love for this grows. Some very un-pc scenes (below) and black humour but also a touching moment in the park and the perfect ironic ending.

[christoph404]

I think its difficult not to like writer director Martin McDonagh's style, I think he is very talented and his background as a playwright is evident in his films. I would agree that "In Bruges" is infinitely watchable, you find little new things in it on each viewing. Actually, prior to making "In Bruges" McDonagh made a superb little short film with Brendan Gleeson called "Six Shooter". Its mainly set on a train journey in Ireland with a grumpy Gleeson interacting with some "interesting" fellow passengers. Its a superb little film of about 30 minutes length with trademark dark humour, I'd recommend it.

[Irongiant]

Count me in as another fan of 'In Bruges' - a really wonderful film with some top class acting and writing.

Also enjoyed Six Shooter.

I see that Martin McDonagh's brother, John Michael McDonagh, has also written and directed a film (also starring Brendan Gleeson) that was very well received at Sundance. It's not yet been released, but should be out this year. It's called 'The Guard':

The Guard (2011)

[DB7]

My favourite film: In Bruges

In our writers' favourite film series, Peter Beech takes aim at Martin McDonagh's comic caper, in which two Catholic crims lose their cool in Belgium


The best films waste no time, and In Bruges hits the ground sprinting with this pin-sharp voiceover: "After I'd killed him, I dropped the gun in the Thames, washed the residue off my hands in the bathroom of a Burger King, and walked home to await instructions."


Bam. Within 10 seconds, the story has begun. A young hitman, Ray (Colin Farrell), has botched his first job for East End crime boss Harry Waters (Ralph Fiennes) and needs to go away for a while – to Bruges. He is incandescently stroppy about this. Accompanying him is Ken (Brendan Gleeson), an older gangster who, guidebook in hand, greets the Belgian town and its misty pre-Christmas streets with the determined gusto of your dad on a camping trip, all deep nose-breathing and packed itineraries.

Bruges is really the fourth name on the cast list here: its 12th-century canals and lamplit cobbles form the perfect backdrop to the script's crepuscular tone, as well as its somewhat medieval probing of morality and blame and redemption. Because (spoilers ahead!) Ray, in the course of performing a hit on a priest, has also inadvertently shot dead a choirboy. His rage at being stuck in this purgatorial "shithole" hides an anguish over what, if there is an afterlife, must surely be an unpardonable sin.

Like both leads and the film's writer-director, Martin McDonagh, the two protagonists are Irish. They traipse dutifully around the city's Catholic shrines and get into misunderstandings with foreigners. The point seems to be about belonging: two men, alienated by their profession, are stranded in a city full of families, at a time for families, having irrevocably maimed a family. ("There's a Christmas tree somewhere in London," says Ray, "with a bunch of presents underneath it that'll never be opened.") When Ken receives the order to bump off his young companion – this phone call, in which Harry suddenly describes Ray in the past tense, is chilling beyond description – the old hitman's fatherliness flourishes, pitching him against Harry, a friend to whom he owes a debt from long ago.

In Bruges happened to me by accident one night on DVD. I didn't catch it at the cinema because the poster made it look like some sort of crime caper – another questionable credit for Colin Farrell. In fact, a crime caper is what it almost is, but it's also something more postmodern: a film noir gatecrashed by reality. What begins as a faintly chilling overlap of the underworld and the everyday becomes a glorious farce when normality refuses to go back in its box and let drama take over.

The result is like watching Pulp Fiction's "Royale with cheese" exchange stretched over 90 minutes, only it's braver than Tarantino because these hitmen never disappear into cool. They take out their contact lenses at night, queue up at tourist sites, drink too much local beer and tread on each other's toes in the budget hotel room they're forced to share. They fall over in the snow. It's relentless, just like normality. The film's only chase scene ends when the pursuer simply runs out of puff and has to stop to check his map (you know how these European canal towns are). Another character, grievously wounded, drags himself with his last strength to the top of Bruges's medieval belfry to administer a lifesaving sniper shot, only to find – something that never happens at crucial moments in movies – the marketplace has been totally obscured by fog. Time and again, bathos derails pathos. McDonagh won't let the film slide fully into either tragedy or comedy, but keeps it switching between, like a cockney villain trying to maintain his balance on icy cobbles.

I say villain, but from the moment Ralph Fiennes enters proper it's clear he's not going to be the thundering Don Logan-style nut he sounds on the phone. Harry is borderline psychotic maybe, dangerous certainly, but he's also a sentimental duffer with a deep fondness for his old friend Ken. This is Fiennes as he's never been seen: a buffoonish but strangely decent working-class criminal who adheres with all his might to an odd but staunch set of principles. His turmoil when he confronts Gleeson's dark-eyed, childlike face manages to be both ridiculous and moving, with both characters trying to suppress the warmth they feel.

Even then, Farrell steals the show. If you like to see big-league actors demonstrate why they're famous in the first place, this is your film. Ray's tears as he tortures himself over the death of the boy are heartbreakingly realistic, his teenagerish sulks hilarious. Great supporting performances bolster but don't overpower – my favourite being the away-with-the-fairies gun dealer, Yuri, who develops a fixation, mid-conversation, with the word "alcoves". ("He does yoga," Harry tells Ken.) The script, as far as I can see, is perfect, embroidering lofty themes with the earthiest of dialogue. McDonagh's background is in theatre and you can tell: the action is tightly unified, resolving itself through a series of satisfying set-pieces in the town's historic centre. In Bruges is one of the few films I could easily rewatch immediately after finishing it, if only to take notes on how he did it. The first time around you're too busy not knowing whether to laugh.