Movie Review: In Bruges
In Bruges didn’t interest me at all when I first heard about it. I’d had a bad run of DVD buys – all films which I had heard were not bad but were actually terrible – and the last thing I needed to do was buy another; especially one trying to be some kind of funny gangster film. No, I decided that I needed to start buying DVDs that were good again, so I headed out and bought ones I’d seen when I was twelve but wasn’t supposed to have been watching – Fright Night being one of them.
But In Bruges kept cropping up. People saying it was actually really good. So after some deliberation I decided, what the hell, I’ll buy it. And I sat down, and there it was: the film I’d been looking for for ages…a funny gangster film that was actually really good!
The good feeling didn’t start right away. The beginning of the film is punishingly slow, slow enough that you realize the cheapest leather sofas you bought for watching TV weren’t the best call, for good reason, and seems to go nowhere…and then things turn a corner. What remains is one of the best and most moving serious / funny gangster films that’s come out in ages.
The plot isn’t exactly complicated: two hit men (Colin Farrel being one of them) are ordered to go to Bruges to await further instructions from their boss. Which they do. One of them loves it and the other hates it a lot, and that’s pretty much it. Not a lot seems to happen until the older guy (played by Brendan Gleeson) gets the call they’ve been waiting for….
In Bruges manages to pull something quite difficult off. It is both a riot of a comedy and a serious, often tragic tale of friendship and retribution. It doesn’t matter if you liked Goodfellas and Lock Stock or not. In Bruges is in a class of its own and nothing like the genre might have you expect.
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