in bruges – close, but not quite
Posted by rollinsloane on 29 February 2008
I can pretty much tell whether or not I’m going to like a movie by what Roger Ebert says about it –a thumbs-up from that senile old windbag and I know I can save myself a trip to the Cineplex. (This is the clinically insane reviewer who mistook Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe for “enchanting” instead of “atrocious,” after all). So when Ebert gifted In Bruges with a 4-star crown, my heart sank. I had so wanted to like this movie.
Scripted and helmed by acid-tongued playwright Martin McDonaugh (whose Broadway production of The Lieutenant of Inishmore oscillated spectacularly between hysterical and appallingly grisly), In Bruges sticks two Irish hitman into wee Belgium’s most picturesque city and waits for sparks to fly. The conceit is certainly there, and the cast is game. Colin Farrell steps up to the plate as a soft-hearted crime neophyte in way over his head, while Brendan Gleeson (gifted with one of those gloriously froggy faces forever doomed to character work or radio) plays pseudo-uncle as a gentlemanly seen-it-all pro. Even Ralph Fiennes eschews his usual man-of-few-words gloom to exude some charisma as the duo’s feisty employer, an aggressive kingpin with a strict moral code.
The pieces are all there, but first-time director McDonaugh simply lacks the elusive cinematic glue that could let them gel into a greater whole. The beats are off; the verbal rat-a-tat of his plays lags on screen, with the boys’ amiable, expletive banter either repeating endlessly or stalling short of relevance. A few shots pop from the screen with visual wit, especially when a paunchy falling body explodes all over Bruges’s signature cobblestones, but the movie’s overall look is hum-drum and cable-ready.
The script also slings around some wordy, hateful barbs about race and obesity and dwarves that seem geared to antagonize rather than go in any prescribed direction. Must midgets always be so harped upon? The ending becomes a beautiful knot of narrative threads, but the dialogue that flavors the journey is either ponderous or left-field. In Bruges could have used an editor with as hack a mentality as its bloated script.
hahahahahahahahaha said
Are U Fcuking Kidding Me?
Roger Ebert’s credibility has gone downhill.
His time has come and gone.
The high point of his career was with the late Gene Siskel.
I’ve seen every episode of Siskel & Ebert.
At the Movies and with Richar Roeper.
Nobody cares about his “thumbs up” He has someplace else that he can put it.
There’s a reason why his show got cancelled…it went downhill.
P.S. Those aren’t RAISINETS.
fudi said
How Roger Ebert got to be the so-called dean of movie reviewers is beyond me.I’ve come to use him as a reliable barometer in one way-if he likes a movie,I’ll hate it,and vice-versa.He lost me forever when he gave thumbs down to “Full Metal Jacket”and then thumbs up to “Benji the Hunted”,on the same show!Don’t forget-he wrote the screenplay for “Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens” and still has the nerve to criticize other people’s work!