In Bruges

Martin McDonagh is one of the more exciting playwrights in the theater today. I've never seen any of his plays, but I've read those that make up the Leenane Trilogy (The Beauty Queen of Leenane, A Skull in Connemara, and The Lonesome West) and, he has written several more, most of them set in western Ireland, and marked by sharp, mordant dialogue and sporadic violence, and characters who are locked together in some sort of eternal combat (in one of his plays it's a mother and daughter, in another two brothers).

Two years ago McDonagh won an Oscar for a short film, Six Shooter, which starred Brendan Gleeson, who also stars in his first feature, In Bruges. While some of the dialogue recalls his work on the stage, this film hearkens back to familiar cinematic templates, namely the mythic Old West and the conscience of cold-blooded killers.

The film is aptly titled, for it takes place almost entirely in that city, which is in Belgium and apparently a tourist destination due to a lot of architecture that is intact from its medieval days. Two hit men, Gleeson and Colin Farrell, are holing up there to await instructions from their boss. Gleeson, who is more aesthetically inclined, enjoys getting a chance to see the sites, but Farrell, who is a man-child, is instantly bored and itching to get out. It seems that for Farrell it was his first job, and he's suffering a crisis of conscience because an innocent bystander was killed.

While on the lam, Farrell notices a film crew in town, and that one of the actors is a dwarf ("They're filming midgets!" he says with some excitement). He becomes romantically attracted to a production assistant, who's main job seems to be supplying the crew with drugs. But meanwhile, the boss, sadistically played by Ralph Fiennes, has a disturbing new job for Gleeson.
Most of this wears very well. The dialogue, imaginatively profane, is musical, and the fish out of water scenario yields a lot of laughs. What kept me from fully enjoying the film, though, was a sense that I'd seen this before. Stories about hit men seem to be all over the place these days, and I really don't need to see any more films or read any more books featuring them. McDonagh gives these hit men some kind of moral code, and while I've never met a hit man, I'm doubtful that they are as soul-searching as the three killers on display here.

As for the acting, Gleeson's work is excellent. He's such an interesting actor to look at, with a head shaped like a bag of potatoes, and the ambivalence of a man who can kill for a living yet take pleasure in an twelfth-century cathedral is well-played. Fiennes, with a cockney accent and a sinister stare, must have had fun with this role. As for Farrell, well, those who are disposed to not care for his work would probably think of his work here like fingernails on a blackboard. He's twitchy and jittery, full of nervous tics and the heebie-jeebies. While I was watching I thought he might have recently seen a lot of Robert Downey, Jr's work and was channeling him.

Based on this film, it's unclear whether McDonagh will make as big an impact in cinema as he has in drama, but it's a decent start. For his next film, though, I hope he steers clear of hit men as a subject.