FILM: In Bruges (18)

and odd creature this: two irish hitmen are instructed to hole up in the titular belgian town, to await further instructions. the younger, colin farrell fresh from a marathon viewing of father ted, loathes bruges. in fact his loathing turns as we come to understand around a botched hit: the slaying of a priest also claimed a child and colin’s charged performance attests to a man for whom homicide is a payday but upon which sits a code of honour and right deed. the disgust at bruges’s charms is an expression of his torment and soon the flemish masters accounts of the abyss they view on slack slow days, fashion meaning for his pain. his companion (brendan gleeson) is at turns irascible and then aggrieved as the order come from the unseen uber-cockney villain harry, to slay farrrell, to clean up loose ends and restore some sense of right. so it all sounds dreadfully anguished but this movie is played for laughs, mainly through the angst of our col’s staggering forward, impelled towards some sense of calamity. directly quoting roegs masterpiece ‘dont look now’ the characters move through the dim watery of bruges, deadpanning their mordant lines. violence and dark misgivings abound in equal measure and when gleeson fails to kill his chum the ferocious ralph fiennes’ gang boss appears to lay the matter to rest; its all a question of hard man geezer honour. perhaps im being hard on in bruges, its nicely shot and conjures fine performances all round but its trying too hard to stuff a quart into a pint pot. there was a distinct feeling of a script overly burdened by its pretensions and whilst the comparison between the tragedy of ‘dont look now’ and ‘in bruges’ is almost a pleasing one, it is the gap twixt visualisation and realisation into which my viewing pleasure fell. a good film besmirched by its own aspirations. still, worth seeing and considerably better than most hollywood fare.