Colin Farrell and Academy Award-nominee Ralph Fiennes star in this edgy, action-packed comedy, filled with thrilling chases, spectacular shoot-outs and an explosive ending you won't want to miss!
Hit men Ray (Farrell) and Ken (Brendan Gleeson, Harry Potter) have been ordered to cool their heels in the storybook city of Bruges (it's in Belgium) after finishing a big job. But since hit men make the worst tourists, they soon find themselves in a life & death struggle of comic proportions against one very angry crime boss (Fiennes)!
Get ready for the outrageous and unpredictable fun you will have In Bruges, the movie critics are calling, "wildly entertaining" - Stephen Rebello, Playboy.
The considerable pleasures of In Bruges begin with its title, which suggests a glumly self-important art film but actually fits a rattling-good tale of two Irish gangsters "keepin' a low profile" after a murder gone messily wrong. Bruges, the best-preserved medieval town in Belgium, is where the bearlike veteran Ken (Brendan Gleeson) and newbie triggerman Ray (Colin Farrell) have been ordered by their London boss to hole up for two weeks. As the sly narrative unfolds like a paper flower in water, "in Bruges" also becomes a state of mind, a suspended moment amid centuries-old towers and bridges and canals when even thuggish lives might experience a change in direction. And throughout, the viewer has ample opportunity to consider whose pronunciation of "Bruges" is more endearing, Gleeson's or Farrell's. The movie marks the feature writing-directing debut of playwright Martin McDonagh, whose droll meditation on sudden mortality, Six Shooter, copped the 2005 Oscar for best live-action short. Although McDonagh clearly relishes the musicality of his boyos' brogue and has written them plenty of entertaining dialogue, In Bruges is no stageplay disguised as a film. The script is deceptively casual, allowing for digressions on the newly united and briskly thriving Europe, and annexing passers-by as characters who have a way of circling back into the story with unanticipatable consequences. That includes a film crew--shooting a movie featuring, to Ray's fascination, "a midget" (Jordan Prentice)--and a fetching blond production assistant (Clémence Poésy) whose job description keeps evolving. There's one other key figure: Harry, the Cockney gang boss whose omnipotence remains unquestioned as long as he remains offscreen, back in England, as if floating in an early Harold Pinter play. Harry has reasons inextricably tender and perverse for selecting Bruges as his hirelings' destination, and eventually he emerges from the aether to express them--first as a garrulous telephone voice and then in the volatile form of Ralph Fiennes. By that point the charmed moment of suspension, already shaken by several irruptions of violence, is pretty well doomed. But In Bruges continues to surprise and satisfy right up to the end. --Richard T. Jameson
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
Dark Comedy "In Bruges" Makes Good Use of Farrell's Irish Brogue Chops:
International actors working in Hollywood can often charm and persuade us when featured in big-budget blockbuster films. But in movies that showcase their best qualities in their native tongues--or accents--with scripts closer to wherever they call home, they sometimes shine and dazzle in ways that astound us. That seems to be the case with Colin Farrell as the emotionally wired Irish hit-man Ray in director Martin McDonagh's dark and twisted comedy, In Bruges. If Farrell has made a name for... more info
Death in Venice of the North:
Splendid performances by Colin Farrell, Brendon Gleeson (who played a spy in "Sleepers") and Ralph Fiennes as well as a solid story and magnificent cinematography lift this sometimes bloodstained film from the ranks of the ordinary thriller. Both Farrell and Gleeson's portrayals of paid assassins, in whom the charming canals, bridges, and gabled houses of Bruges engender a sense of conscience--and, ultimately, redemption--are worthy of Academy Awards; and Ralph Fiennes is also excellent in what for him... more info
superior thriller:
In this brilliant, original deadpan thriller, two Irish hitmen, one young, the other older, take refuge in the beautiful Belgian city of Bruges. Gradually, we learn what they are running away from. While they wait for instructions, they explore the city which the older one finds entrancing and the younger one finds boring.
I can't tell much more about this movie without giving away the plot. Suffice to say that it's often very funny, has several truly surprising plot twists and that the backdrop is... more info
Surprisingly positive experience:
Having never been a huge fan of pinup Colin Farrel who most of all look like a hairy version of the midgets his character is so fascinated by in this movie I went into this movie with rather low expectations and that might in part explain my excitement with the movie. This low paced low budget movie is so full of wit and brilliant lines that it makes more than up for the rather slow pace and predictable story line. The interaction between the two main characters is brilliant as they both struggle... more info
