In Bruges - film review

In Bruges feels like it belongs in the mid-to-late 1990s during the Tarantino hysteria that followed Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, but thank goodness it doesn't and is instead a child of 2008. Not only would it have been lost in that 90s hurricane* of mediocrity, it also probably wouldn't have been quite as good.

 

I think I was fifteen years old when cool, smart-talking hitmen were all the rage and it annoyed me even back then. Surely I was the target audience for that kind of film but I just wasn't, probably because most of the other kids who were into that sort of film were so detestable and infantile that I found it so much easier just being into, well, literally anything else.

 

I'm sure the teenagers of today will be saying the same thing about zombie films in twenty years time.

 

But if there were a film from that era (or just after it) that kept coming to mind while watching In Bruges I'd say it was the similarly wonderful Grosse Point Blank which, too, was a low budget diamond in the rough that mixed comedy with the redemption of a likeable but haunted hitman.

 

The extremes that In Bruges made me feel took me very much by surprise. I wasn't expecting to laugh so much and I certainly wasn't expecting to cry so much, to the point where I found it incredibly hard to hold back my tears during a devastatingly emotional scene between Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson on a park bench.

 

It also made an interesting point (whether it meant to or not) about depression and suicide. Being someone who has suffered from depression since his early teens and has been taking antidepressants on and off since 1999, I identified strongly with a set of characters whose lives have become overly complicated and who have made choices in life that perhaps aren't right for them.

 

Sometimes you can't see the terrible mistakes you've made until you're climbing back out, but when you're down there, in the hole you've dug for yourself with apparently no ladder to climb back out, it's tempting and seemingly only logical just to lie there and wait for death.

 

But life is full of ladders, as Brendan Gleeson states at one point. Well, not in those words, per se, but basically the message is that if you happen to find yourself trapped in life just remember: you can do ANYTHING. There are hundreds of people out there that will try to tell you what you can't do (and they're often people sending you bills in the post), but what do they know? Do what you want to do to be happy and sort out the paperwork afterwards... sometimes you've just got to make a mess and say "sorry" instead of sitting around saying "please" as your life slowly ticks away.

 

I've probably overcomplicated the message intended there but, well, that's what I got from it anyway.

 

Getting back on track though, the film is largely an actors' paradise with a rightly lauded performance from Colin Farrell who puts his usual coiled energy to comedic good use; Brendan Gleeson is tender but stern and lends the film a warmth that surely would have been absent without him; and Ralph Fiennes drops his usual erudite facade in favour of vile cockney brashness that is delightful in it's ugliness.

 

But with any film that clearly has to end with either redemption, justice, death or all three, the final reel will ultimately be its toughest mountain to climb and I'd be a terrible liar if I said In Bruges gets all the way to the summit.

 

But it gets very close.

 

Actually, the main problem is that the film doesn't seem to know how to end and so just keeps going and going until, like its main characters, it's simply out of puff. This is a minor complaint though and in fairness it's a fine ending - it's just not the most unique one and perhaps even a little convoluted and implausible.

 

But there you go.

 

So, to sum up, In Bruges is smart, funny, heartfelt and debauched in all the right places. It's also a great advert for its titular Belgian city but not so much for pissing off Ralph Fiennes.

 

It's also basically Father Ted with hitmen instead of priests.

 

*shitstorm