In Bruges is the perfect antidote to the usual predictable, directed-by-numbers Hollywood fare.
The director, Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, keeps the film on a tightrope between comedy and tragedy - just as you think you've been plunged to the point of depressing no return, he brings you up again with a brilliant one-liner. This tactic could so easily have been the film's undoing, with neither mood quite hitting the mark. But somehow he gets away with it, and rather than reducing the force of the tragedy, the comic moments actually increase its impact, and vice versa.
The usual moral code that we all expect in cinema-land is also distorted - there aren't really any goodies, yet the baddies who make up the cast are far more engaging, sympathetic, and, ultimately, realistic, than any of the two-dimensional creations usually seen battling across the screen, fighting for everything good, right, and wholesome. Of course, this is helped by some top-notch acting - with Brendan Gleeson so heartbreakingly good he threatens to eclipse Colin Farrell (distractingly reminiscent - at least in the early part of the film - of Dougal from Father Ted). Ralph Fiennes is also impressive as the sinisterly seductive, yet ultimately unhinged, Harry, and Jordan Prentice, as the midget - sorry, dwarf, - actor, gets his teeth into a more challenging part than American Pie and its ilk ever offered him.
This all makes for a refreshingly unpredictable film - you really don't know where it will all end, and you quickly learn that in McDonagh's world anything is possible, no one is safe, and clean, happy endings are as mythical as Harry's view of Bruges as a fairytale city.
The director, Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, keeps the film on a tightrope between comedy and tragedy - just as you think you've been plunged to the point of depressing no return, he brings you up again with a brilliant one-liner. This tactic could so easily have been the film's undoing, with neither mood quite hitting the mark. But somehow he gets away with it, and rather than reducing the force of the tragedy, the comic moments actually increase its impact, and vice versa.
The usual moral code that we all expect in cinema-land is also distorted - there aren't really any goodies, yet the baddies who make up the cast are far more engaging, sympathetic, and, ultimately, realistic, than any of the two-dimensional creations usually seen battling across the screen, fighting for everything good, right, and wholesome. Of course, this is helped by some top-notch acting - with Brendan Gleeson so heartbreakingly good he threatens to eclipse Colin Farrell (distractingly reminiscent - at least in the early part of the film - of Dougal from Father Ted). Ralph Fiennes is also impressive as the sinisterly seductive, yet ultimately unhinged, Harry, and Jordan Prentice, as the midget - sorry, dwarf, - actor, gets his teeth into a more challenging part than American Pie and its ilk ever offered him.
This all makes for a refreshingly unpredictable film - you really don't know where it will all end, and you quickly learn that in McDonagh's world anything is possible, no one is safe, and clean, happy endings are as mythical as Harry's view of Bruges as a fairytale city.