by Orrin Konheim

Created on: January 11, 2009   Last Updated: November 09, 2009

Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleason are a pair of hit men who are paid by their boss to go to Bruges for an undisclosed assignment. They are supposed to pose as two tourists and maintain a low profile while waiting for a phone call. Ken (Gleason) takes an interest in the sights of the town and jollily obliges, while Ray (Farrell) is very bored. He is somewhat of a cultural boob with low intellectual curiosity but fortunately he gets more likeable as the film progresses as we slowly see that he starts to develop a curiosity about living a better life. Ray is also bored because he is coping with the guilt of having accidentally killed a child. Ralph Feinnes also plays a prominent role in the film's third act as the enigmatic boss. The film is also populated by the kinds of characters that come with small-town comedies: An obnoxious Canadian tourist, a pregnant innkeeper, an alluring coke dealer (with whom Ray falls in love), her unlucky boyfriend, and an opinionated midget.

In Bruges is a black comedy whose idea arose from a vacation writer/director Martin McDonagh took to the pristine town of Bruges, Belgium. In an interview on the DVD's extras, McDonagh said that when he was in Bruges, he was in awe of the town's medieval beauty but had the simultaneous feeling of being incredibly bored after two or three hours. He took these two disparate feelings and split them up over two characters.

The film reminds me of Analyze This or Anger Mangement in that it features a star (Robert De Niro or Jack Nicholson in the above-mentioned examples) making fun of their screen personas. Colin Farrell is playing to type in an extreme sense, reflecting his public image: Shallow and mostly interested in booze and women. (In real life, Colin Farrell is an avid reader and student of history who would be the kind of guy who's interested in a place like Bruges, but I digress).

The oddball relationships between the characters is one of the film's stronger points. The romance that develops between Ray and the coke dealer is fascinating because it would ordinarily seem so doomed for Ray. She seems to give him a lot of chances but it turns out that she has a dark side to her as well. Ray also develops a fondness for Ken that doesn't exist at the beginning of the film and it evolves in a convincing way over the course of the film to the point where when events turn dramatic, there's a genuine sense that the two matter to each other.

The dialogue was really good but a pet peeve of mine in the dialogue is that everyone talks the same and uses the f-word in every sentence. The screenwriter did such a great job of giving everyone distinct personalities that I wish he would have given then truly distinct voices.

Overall, the film was good enough to be considered one of the top ten films I've seen this past year. Even in its lesser moments, the film was undeniably profound.

Learn more about this author, Orrin Konheim.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.