[in bruges] requiem for three hitmen

The reason Roger Ebert is such a popular film critic is because he is a good film critic. You don't have to agree with everything he concludes but he's on the money with In Bruges.

Now, call me a prude but I don't like the way Colin Farrell operates in real life. On screen though and especially in this film, he's the goods. As Ebert says:

Farrell in particular hasn't been this good in a few films, perhaps because this time he's allowed to relax and be Irish. As for Brendan Gleeson, if you remember him in "The General," you know that nobody can play a more sympathetic bad guy.

This is a superior film, despite its lukewarm box office reception. The cast is talented and Clémence Poésy is so uncannily like someone I know well in Russia that the film would be memorable just for her. Thekla Reuten [photo below] maybe even overshadows her although her role is smaller.

Actually, it's a great film in itself. Ebert again:

If the movie accomplished nothing else, it inspired in me an urgent desire to visit Bruges ... The movie does an interesting thing with Bruges. It shows us a breathtakingly beautiful city, without ever seeming to be a travelogue. It uses the city as a way to develop the characters ... But [the film] accomplished a lot more than that.

It's dark, there are quite a few threads and the black, grim humour runs below the surface the whole way through. It's atmospheric and lush and yet it does something else only a few might enjoy - it allows nothing particularly active to happen for long portions of the run time.



Then it finally comes together. Ebert:

Without dreaming of telling you what happens next, I will say it is not only ingenious but almost inevitable the way the screenplay brings all of these destinies together at one place and time. Along the way, there are times of great sadness and poignancy, times of abandon, times of goofiness, and that kind of humor that is really funny because it grows out of character and close observation.

All the above is probably telling you what you already knew.

In Bruges.