I saw the dvd, "In Bruges," this weekend. The critics are wild about this box office flop. I thought it was watchable, but not nearly as good as Ebert and Roeper (actually, the guy taking Ebert's place) made it sound. Some funny scenes, some maudlin scenes, lots of violent scenes. Bruges will not make it part of their tourism package, as the Clive Owen character constantly refers to the city as a shi_hole. And even Ralph Fiennes, who loves the town, says "they had to put such a wonderful town in Belgium. If it was located somewhere good, it would be too crowded." And, the entire movie seems to regard Bruges as some form of Purgatory.
The story follows two hitmen ordered out of London and to Bruges by their boss, because Clive Owen killed a kid by mistake, while murdering a priest. I was waiting for some sexual abuse jokes, but they were not forthcoming. The story moves along at a decent pace, but, in the end, the plot doesn't make a lot of sense. We have a one-eyed "badger game" conman, a racist dwarf, belligerent Canadians and a city where the public servants seem awfully slow to react. There is one scene where a corpse lingers in the most important plaza in the city for an awfully long time.
All of the hitmen have some weird sense of honor. I didn't believe the movie for a second, but I kind of enjoyed it. |
