Straight to DVD

In Bruges

I spend a lot of my time here talking about movies that, for various reasons, could be a challenge for burnt-out parents of young kids to watch (or even to get into the DVD player). Until now, though, I haven't come across one I thought might be better for the tired-parent audience than for the general one. Well, here's my first candidate: Martin McDonagh's In Bruges.

This movie looked appealing to us in its previews (way back when those were playing on TV), but also looked as if we might be seeing all its best moments in those previews. And its genre—the gangster film with a tongue-in-cheek tone—tends, in Whitney's and my experience, to be so-so at best (most of the oeuvre of Guy Ritchie) and execrable at worst (three words: Shoot 'Em Up). Then there was the lead actor, Colin Farrell, whom we'd seen before only in a several pretty terrible American films and hadn't been impressed by.

On the other hand, it seemed certain to be action-packed and funny. We knew writer and first-time director McDonagh from his stage plays—he's a master of language, sort of an Irish David Mamet—and therefore trusted that the pace would be snappy. And also turning up in those previews were Ralph Fiennes (with a Cockney accent!) and the always excellent Brendan Gleeson, both favorites of ours. Add in a strong recommendation from a work colleague, and there was really no reason In Bruges shouldn't get on the queue and into the machine.

The movie is about Ray (Farrell) and Ken (Gleeson), two Irish hit men who've been sent to the lovely little city of Bruges in Belgium to hide out after a botched job. Ken, the older and wiser of the two, is content to enjoy this "time off" seeing the charming sights the medieval town has to offer, but Ray is furious: How dare their boss, Harry (Fiennes), exile them to this dull backwater? The first third of the film is pure verbal comedy, with Ray never missing a chance to express his contempt for "fuckin' Bruges," and Ken ever more appalled that Ray can't just shut up and enjoy the moment. And Farrell and Gleeson are both experts with McDonagh's typical blistering, wonderfully obscene repartee—they make a very funny team. (Their outtakes, included among the DVD's extras, are worth checking out when you're done with the movie.)

But just as you're thinking that's all there's going to be to In Bruges, you find out a bit more about exactly how that job back home went wrong, and to see that there's more bothering Ray than just the slow pace of Brugean life. (I should warn that, in what is apparently a requirement of 21st-century film drama, these details involve harm done to a child—but McDonagh conveys them adroitly, without the undue cruelty to the audience that I've been finding so prevalent of late.) The plot takes other unexpected turns as well: The pair stumble across a movie that's being filmed on location in the city, and become acquainted both with Chloë (Clémence Poésy), a beautiful young Belgian woman working on the set for whom Ray falls hard, and Jimmy (Jordan Prentice), an American dwarf actor who's in the movie-within-the-movie. Ray's desperation—to forget the past, to woo Chloë—becomes the focus, and the comedic tone picks up both an edge and a dreamy, whimsical overlay.

And then McDonagh takes another turn, when Ken discovers the real reason Harry has sent them to Bruges and decides what to do about it. The film accelerates into action for its last quarter, during which Fiennes shines in his role as a psychotic gang leader with a hidden sentimental side and one narrow moral line he won't cross. This section has its share of bloody violence, of course, but it never crosses the line into unpleasantness (at least not on a small screen—I have heard from some friends that it was a bit more gruesome on the big one).

It may all sound like a jumble, and in some ways it is. But thanks to the tight pacing and hilarious writing and acting—Farrell, who must simply have been terribly miscast in most of his U.S. roles, is a particular revelation, and Gleeson upholds his stratospheric standard—it works marvelously. In Bruges is funny, entertaining, surprising, even moving at times—and about the most fun Whitney and I have had watching a movie in ages.