Directed by: Martin McDonagh
Starring: Collin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, Christopher Walkin, Woody Harrelson
Other Actors of Note: Tom Waits, Harry Dean Stanton, Kevin Corrigan, Gabourey Sidibe
Plot: "A struggling screenwriter inadvertently becomes entangled in the Los Angeles criminal underworld after his oddball friends kidnap a gangster's beloved Shih Tzu." Taken from www.imdb.com.
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| Collin Farrell is forced to watch "S.W.A.T." |
Hey, remember "In Bruges?" I did a review of it way back in 2008 when I was just a young boy with a song in his heart and a skip in his step. A youth of 20 with no wife, no baby, no job, no cancer, and all the time in the world to sit on his ass and just update blogs that nobody reads. Oh those were truly the salad days when shitty reviews, like the one I have just linked, were things I looked at with pride and said "I am a professional." Anyway I have not come here merely to wax nostalgic and discuss what lessons I have learned toward becoming a better reviewer (doing second drafts is not one of those things) but about the second feature film by writer/director Martin McDonagh. That film, is "Seven Psychopaths."
This movie is a bit hard to pin down plot-wise but I will none-the-less try. Collin Farrell plays Marty, an Irish screenwriter and self-insertion wish fulfillment character who is writing a screenplay that he has only come up with the basic idea of, that script is called "Seven Psychopaths." I will get to that in a minute.
Marty's friend Billy (Sam Rockwell) is trying to help Billy write his movie, but also help his friend Hans (Christopher Walken) in paying for his wife's cancer treatment. Billy and Hans do this by kidnapping peoples' dogs and then returning them weeks later for reward money. Unfortunately Billy has kidnapped the dog of a crazy asshole mob boss (Woody Harrelson) who is more than willing to murder everyone in his path toward getting the dog back.
Marty has a drinking problem, there's a masked vigilante killing off mobsters, Tom Waits is holding a bunny, a Vietnamese Catholic priest is still fighting the Vietnamese war, it's all very complicated. As all this is going on Marty is getting ideas for his screenplay and fleshing these seven psychopaths out as they present themselves in the real world.
So let's get this out of the way. This movie is VERY meta, like a lot. This will of course draw the ire of a lot of film snobs and average movie-goers everywhere. Because self-referential movies are pretentious and stupid and... whatever the fuck. THIS IS NOT "SYNECHDOCHE, NEW YORK!" The meta elements aren't "the point" of the movie. Shut your fuck holes, I don't know why I even read comments on imdb. I hate you all.
Anyway.
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| This is not a movie still. It's just Tom Waits sitting in his living room. |
Collin Farrell was the stand-out of "In Bruges" by far. I'm glad to see that McDonagh brought him back, though he doesn't play off any of the other leads nearly as well as he played off of Brendan Gleeson. He turns in another great performance here but of the four leads of this movie he stands out the least. This isn't Farrell's fault as you'll come to understand in further paragraphs.
Christopher Walkin is getting really old you guys, like really old. He plays a fairly innocent bumbling old man very well, but as with pretty much everything in this movie there are layers to his character. Hans is a very complex man who deals with life a bit differently than anyone else, he's dark and brooding but always seems to have this bizarre cheerfulness about him. At times it seems like all the good acting has run out of Walken but then he steps up to the plate and reminds us all that he's not Al Pacino and fuck you he's one of the greatest goddamn actors that ever lived. Hans is a very funny and tragic character and I would be hard-pressed to think of any other actor who could pull the part off the way Walken has here.
Woody Harrelson doesn't have a lot of villain roles in his wheelhouse, aside from "Natural Born Killers" (Now there is a pretentious and dumb movie.) So it's pretty jarring to see him as the heavy for this movie. Charlie is a very manic character: he goes from funny to menacing seemingly at the drop of a hat and Harrelson pulls it off in the most perfect manner possible. It's probably the best role the man has had in over a decade. He's not really a super complex villain (he is, after all, just a really crazy angry guy) but he's memorable and reminiscent of Anton Chigur of "No Country For Old Men" at times.
Sam Rockwell gives the best performance of his career. Billy is such a delightfully unhinged and twitchy character reminiscent at times of Brad Pitt's role in "12 Monkeys." I have long been a fan of Rockwell but this is really just the best thing he has ever done and and I can't begin to rave about it. In a case of Colin Farrell, Christopher Walkin, and Woody Harrelson it's Sam Rockwell that stands out by a wide margin. If this man doesn't get an Oscar nod this year it's a crime.
Tom Waits plays Tom Waits and that's fucking delightful as always, goddammit!
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| Sam Rockwell explains the merits of "Gentlemen Broncos" |
Upon leaving the theater with my wife she turned to me and said "That was really good, but I couldn't even begin to tell somebody what it was about." And that is very true, this movie doesn't really have a straight narrative, it's not a 3-act story, the climax isn't really a climax and the characters don't so much grow as they change and mutate. And you know what? There's not a damn thing wrong with that.
There's an often unspoken belief that stories which don't follow a common narrative structure are somehow inferior from those that do but I disagree, it's usually those that don't which end up being the best. Look at "No Country For Old Men", "Pulp Fiction", or "Once Upon a Time in the West." These are all movies that don't have an overarching message except in the very vaguest sense, they play on emotions, thoughts, ideas.
The best movies are movies that put thoughts into your head and tug at your emotions like marionette strings. Some of the funniest scenes in "Seven Psychopaths" involve brutal murder, laughs come immediately following sad or tense scenes. You'll feel happy, sad, scared, horrified, relieved, and mirthful and all these changing and contrary feelings come within seconds of each other. The movie doesn't rely on cheap twists to keep you going, most of the twists are cleared up by the 1 hour mark. But I can honestly say I had no idea where the movie was going by the time it reached my conclusion.
I walked out of the theater filled with energy and zeal and a very pleasant feeling inside of me. That's the magic of movies, just like how a good song sends you off into its own little world a good movie leaves you feeling excited and re-energized. I've enjoyed a lot of movies this year but only a couple have given me this feeling and this one more than any. This is a good movie and my nod for best movie of the year.
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| Sam Rockwell impersonates Nicolas Cage. |
"Seven Psychopaths" is on a fairly limited release and you're likely to only find it at bigger movie-houses that have 20 or more screens. I urge everyone very strongly to check it out.
I give this movie a 5 out of 5.
