Review: Seven Psychopaths (dir. Martin McDonaugh)

Story: Irish screenwriter Marty (Colin Farrell) struggles with his new script. He has a title – Seven Psychopaths – but no psychopaths. Luckily, his best friend is a dog-napping failed actor (Sam Rockwell). And he and his partner (Christopher Walken) bring plenty psychopaths into Marty’s life. If only he’d be willing to write a violent action film, rather than a peace-loving Gandhi-quoting French flick.

There is much wrong with Martin McDonaugh’s Seven Psychopaths. The director of the simply brilliant In Bruges has a traditionally difficult ‘second album’. It is self-referential to the point of being self-obsessed. It has too many characters, too complicated a story line and in general, it is much, much too long.

Individual actors shine (Christopher Walken, Tom Waits, Linda Bright Clay) while others falter (Sam Rockwell’s Billy is funny but without substance; Colin Farrell isn’t even acting). Dialogues are stunningly funny, but the storytelling is plodding. Monological flashbacks are fascinating, but they seem to exist in a different universe from the main story.

Comparisons are easily drawn with the Charlie Kauffman-written and Spike Jonze-directed Adaptation. But added to that must the influence of a later-career Quentin Tarantino. You know, the Tarantino of Kill Bill, Death Proof and Inglourious Basterds, who simply lacked any discipline to tell a simple, proper story.

However, Seven Psychopaths does leave me with satisfaction. ‘Cause all things taken together, I believe it. I believe that a writer-director who was succesfull with a European flick has difficulties adjusting to Hollywood. And to the expectations Hollywood has of him. I believe that McDonaugh, like Marty, did not want to make another bloody gangster movie (however enjoyable In Bruges was). I believe that this is a genuine argument against the inherently hypocritical attitude to violence in American cinema.

As it turns out in the end, it is the story of the fourth psychopath – the Vietcong priest – that is the most important. Event though it seems, for a long time, that his story has nothing to do with the rest of the film. Is his quest for revenge on the American agressors simply that – a quest for revenge – or is there more to his story? I believe that it can very well be understood as a metaphor for Seven Psychopaths itself: A film that is terribly violent exactly in order to question the violence.

Final verdict: Funny, violent, well acted but also unbalanced, plodding and self-obsessed. Seven Psychopaths will not fail to entertain you, but if the central message does not get through (which might very well happen with so much other stuff going on) this may be quite a disappointment after In Bruges.

Existential Drama With Jokes – the The Guard review

“I don’t know if you’re very smart, or very dumb.” Don Cheadle’s American FBI agent Wendell Everett does not know what to think of Garda (Irish police) sergeant Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson). Boyle is an alcoholic, drug-stealing, whoring and racist country cop. He is also a smart, no-nonsense investigator and a former Olympic swimmer.

The Guard, like Boyle, is not what it seems on first sight. Based on the trailer one might expect a buddy cop action comedy – with a twist. Based on the first twenty or thirty minutes of the film, you’d be forgiven to think that it is a dark, satirical comedy. But when the credits start to run after only 96 minutes, you realize you’ve seen something different altogether.

In the same way that Boyle fools Everett about his true character, director John Micheal McDonagh tricks the audience. For although there are jokes in the film (mainly in the first act) this is not a comedy. And although there is a big final shoot out, this is not an action film. And even though Boyle and Everett warm up to each other eventually, Everett realizes at the end that he still hardly knows anything about Boyle. They are not buddies.

What is The Guard then? If there are so many things that it seems to be but is not. Well, it is the story of unconventional (and that’s a euphemism here people) police officer Boyle, who stumbles upon a murder victim who happens to be a drugs dealer wanted by the FBI. Against his will Boyle has to take on Everett to research the murder and the gang of drugs smugglers. But Boyle does it in his own way, and not on his day off, on which he stays in a hotel room with two prostitutes from Dublin.

Boyle is an enigma. A dedicated police officer at one point, disinterested the next. He would be a low-life if he weren’t a cop, but he is also a faithful son to a dying mother. He will help out Everett, but when his help is not appreciated he’ll just as well stay at home. It is only when he, or those whom he cares about, get implicated in the violence that Boyle becomes an unstoppable force of nature; thirsty for revenge like the best dramatic heroes of the Western. The Guard is an existential drama: Boyle is not a fully fledged predetermined character. It is the events of the plot, and the way that he responds to them that define him. For as far as we are allowed to get to know him that is.

The Guard inevitably calls into recollection In Bruges, which also starred Brendan Gleeson. And which was directed by Martin McDonagh, the brother of the director of this film. But The Guard is actually the opposite of In Bruges. In Bruges was the story of two men who were like fish out of water. Gerry Boyle is perfectly at home in the wind swept coast county of Connemara. In Bruges was a film about fate and destiny, filled with Catholic guilt. There is no guilt at all in The Guard. At least not with Boyle. Just a bit with Mark Strong, the English gangster who’s had enough of the game. And whereas in In Bruges every frame was filled with the baroque ornaments of a medieval city, The Guard’s landscapes are empty and cold.

Does all that matter then? No not at all. The Guard is a wonderful little film, with a leading actor in the form of his life. With beautiful landscapes and accents and with an amazing score by the American band Calexico. Go and see it as long as it is in cinemas.

Shiny Shiny Little Toy – the The American review

The most remarkable thing about The American is how much it resembles In Bruges. Anton Corbijn’s second feature, after 2007’s Control, tells the story of an American hitman, hiding out in an old town on continental Europe after killing an innocent person on a job gone wrong. Martin McDonagh’s second feature, from 2008, told the story of two Irish hitman hiding out in an old town on continental Europe after killing an innocent person on a job gone wrong.

The resemblances are more than superficial. Both films dwell in Catholic imagery. Both show the old town as both heaven and hell, visually as well as thematically, and settle in the end for purgatory. The protagonists have to find redemption; have to atone for their sins and by doing so find new purpose in life.

But where In Bruges was a pitch black comedy, with lots of laugh-out-loud funny moments emphasizing the bizarreness and tragedy of the plot, The American is dead serious. And very shallow. Actually, it seems as if Corbijn, with his “difficult second album”, has been too easy on himself.

For the first hour, the film marvels at its own beauty. Corbijn acts like a first year Film School student, who has just been given the camera for the first time. ‘Look’, he says, ‘look how beautiful I can frame this mountain, or this train. Look how George Clooney’s old hitman Jack goes through the tunnel, towards the light.’

‘Look, how much I know about film history, how I refer to spaghetti Westerns.’ In case we hadn’t noticed that a silent stranger came to a quiet town, Corbijn thinks it is necessary to have a television in the village café play Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West, and have the café owner tell us that it is a Leone film, and that Leone was an Italian. Filmmaking for Dummies, might have been an alternative title for the screenplay based on Rowan Joffe’s novel A Very Private Gentleman.

Corbijn also acts out an almost pornographic sensibility when it comes to framing the young women in his film. He seems to be unable not to continuously linger on the ladies’ behinds, like a horny teenager. He also has Violante Placido have an orgasm on film that really need not be there. Perhaps Corbijn is aspiring to be the successor of Paul Verhoeven as a dirty old Dutch director.

Does all this mean that there is nothing to be enjoyed about The American? Of course not. Clooney plays very restricted and minimal, but is outshone by Placido as the prostitute that becomes his love interest. Paolo Bonacelli is lovely as the realistic priest who, literally, takes his lambs to the slaughterhouse. For the Dutch public there is a nice little supporting role for Thekla Reuten, with three different haircuts. Reuten also had a nice little supporting role in In Bruges by the way.

And give credit where it is due: Corbijn, together with cinematographer Martin Ruhe, makes the Ambruzzo region in Italy look gorgeous. And once we’re passed the one hour mark, when the plot seems to find its pull and stuff starts happening, and the inevitable ending becomes clear, The American almost develops the dramatic depth of a Greek tragedy. But by then, it is already too late for redemption.