Review- In Bruges

This week, your christmas song is Jingle Bell Rock. Like the film, it's classy and very stylish. Unlike the film, no c-bombs are dropped.

It's the Christmas season and to get into the spirit I decided to watch a gory and dark film that has an average of 1.18 f-bombs a minute. But it's set around Christmas so that's what counts, am I right? No? Okay then. In that case I'll just sit in the corner adoring the hell out of this dark, hilarious and damn near perfect movie. Because that's the Christmas spirit right there.

In Bruges is an action comedy set in the village of Bruges in Belgium. Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson (Ray and Ken respectively) play assassins and are sent here because Ray has messed up a job. This is all we know at the start and their brief is to keep a low profile which consists of sightseeing and staying in their shared hotel room. For Ken, it's bliss. For Ray, it's hell. It's the typical buddy cop set-up but that's about where the typical nature of this film ends. It flits between lovely shots of Bruges and scenes in which Ray and Ken just sit talking. Also, some action scenes but to talk about them would ruin the movie. Colin Farrell delivers a performance on level with the one he delivered in Seven Psychopaths. He is miserable, insulting and foul mouthed, which is perfect for his role. Brendan Gleeson does a great job as what's essentially the straight man. He and Farrell have wonderful on-screen chemistry and I would watch a film double this length just with them talking about everything from the mundane to the surprising. And when Ralph Fiennes turns up (as the boss, Harry), something magical happens. Forget about how potty-mouthed Ray and Ken were, Harry is a whole new level. We get an early taste of this in the message he leaves for our protagonists early on and the reality of this mythical being is just a beautiful as you could ever imagine.

Like the director's other film Seven Psychopaths, the humour in this film comes from both the mundane and ridiculous. Like I said, the cast all have wonderful chemistry that makes every scene a joy to watch. It's probably the fastest 2 hours I've spent in a film. Now, the mundane type of stuff is just conversations. There are talks about everything from life and family to if there will be a huge war between blacks and whites and about how dwarfs (or midgets) in showbiz tend to kill themselves an awful lot. You also have moments of ridiculous humour which generally consist of any one of the characters using about eight different swear words a sentence at one of the other characters. There's a particualar section involving Brendan Gleeson (respected actor and three time Golden Globe nominee) and five instances of the C-word that will not fail to have you rolling around with laughter. Unless you're a bit sensitive in which case, the film is certainly not for you. It's dark, gory and not afraid to push boundaries in places but if you can stand that kind of stuff, welcome to the jungle.

Warning: in this following section, I will be talking spoilers. If you want to watch the film un-spoilt, skip ahead to the conclusion. You have been warned. So, I quite liked the ending. The suicide of Ken was incredibly shocking but also served to save Ray by alerting him to Harry's presence. And I also found Harry's death tragic. Ray could have told him that the "kid" he shot was actually a midget dressed as a school boy but no, he let Harry just kill himself. But I don't know how I feel about Ray surviving, did he deserve it? I guess as a character who frequently contemplated death, it's fitting that in a film this dark, he is one of the few survivors. And the relatively subtle way with which the gore was dealt with was nice. The gore was there, often rather prominently, but it didn't do close up shots for minutes at a time. It was subtlety, done right.

In Bruges is one of the best films I watched this year without a shadow of a shadow of a doubt. It's a film that is what it is unapologetically  and if you can't get with it, get out. It's dark, shocking and pulls no punches and I love it for that. If you're looking for a Christmas film that takes everything you love about Christmas for a spot of slap and tickle round the back. leading it to emerge questioning all it's choices up to now and drinking itself into oblivion, this is the film for that elaborate metaphor. That's why In Bruges gets a score of: