Starring: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes
Director: Martin McDonagh
Release Date: January 17, 2008
Running Time: 107 min
MPAA Rating: R
Distributor: Focus Features

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Review by David DiMichele

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Where or what exactly is Bruges (pronounced "broozh") you ask? Well, technically it’s a town in Belgium that occupies "fairytale" like surroundings. It presents the audience with a previously unseen world consisting of an array of medieval buildings, pubs and streets lined with outdoor bistros. Bruges is a town that’s not only an undiscovered tourist attraction but it’s close to perfect. But more importantly, Bruges plays host to an unforgettable movie, with characters that are more than unique and dialogue that’s sharp, remorseless and funny.

Don’t make the mistake of labelling this movie just another "hit-man" film or a poor man’s Tarantino. In Bruges towers over all recent gun-happy movies and has the most confidence and creativity of any movie in this genre since Pulp Fiction. The creative juice is abundant. It’s brought to In Bruges by writer/director Martin McDonagh (in his first feature-length film). It starts with him and slowly reverberates throughout the entire cast.

The result of this is a career high point for Colin Farrell (who’s already having quite a year with Cassandra’s Dream) and the usual good acting that Brendan Gleeson brings us. They play Ray and Ken, two good friends and hit-men sent to Bruges from Dublin in order to keep a low profile after one of their hits in London turns sour. They now have to wait for a phone call from their boss Harry, played venomously by Ralph Fiennes. He sent them to Bruges because he admires it there and wants them to experience what he felt when he was there.

Ray and Ken aren’t your ordinary hit-men. They don’t kill at the drop of a hat. They eat dinner casually and sip beer the same way. They don’t have Jason Bourne-like attributes. They do what they have to do. The two hit-men and their boss each have a moral code by which they live. Above all, this movie is a study of the human choices and moral values each one of us lives and dies by.

Ray, the rebel and young-buck of the business, hates Bruges right off the bat. He tries warming up to the place when he meets a scorching hot native (Clemence Poesy). Ken, on the other hand, is a seasoned veteran of the business and something of a philosopher: he just wants to sightsee the entire time. He even buys tour guide books to get in the spirit. Both of them know that what they do is wrong and at one point they talk about heaven, hell and purgatory while staring at a painting. They want to know in which category they would fall.

That’s all the plot you’ll be getting from me. All the twists and turns only make me want to dive into this movie over and over again. Amidst all the razor sharp dialogue and the humor there is a deeper message. We have one of our characters looking for salvation but unable to find it anywhere, and another who’s faced with a business ordeal including some extreme circumstances. Ray doesn’t like Bruges at all but he has to admit that there’s something innocent about the place. Maybe it's purgatory?

And that leads me to the direction, which is flawless. McDonagh does a wonderful job of weaving humor with intense bloodshed and violence. I’ve never seen a movie filmed in this area of Belgium before and the camera seems to feel that way as well. It moves as though it wants to view everything in its vicinity; constantly eager to see what’s coming around the next corner. McDonagh volumptuously captures the essence of a city that fell off the map somehow and never seems to have been looked for until now. A perfect music score composed by Carter Burwell only makes the "fairytale" world that Bruges is even more perfect.

Film Rating: **** out of ****

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Comments (2)

Great review!

Thanks so much for writing a review of this film! I have had this on my to-see list for a while but hadn't heard much buzz on it. I will have to be sure to catch it at my local Cinema & Drafthouse.

yiddidea , March 24, 2008 | url

Awesome!

This is the first MUST SEE movie of 2008! Fantastic movie that comes into its own in the 3rd act, for sure.

Jeremy , March 25, 2008

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