The Band's Visit

2007 // Israel - USA - France // Eran Kolirin // March 22, 2008 // Theatrical Print

B - Eran Kolirin's The Band's Visit is a film as light as meringue, but with a rich, complex flavor. It rests on the well-worn comedic premise that strangers trapped together in one location invariably provide insight and wisdom to one another. One might term this rule the "Breakfast Club principle" and the films that follow it "anti-road comedies." In this case, an Egyptian police band finds itself stranded in a backwater Israeli village for one memorable night. Although the story sticks close to the traditional fish-out-water formula, Kolirin's insightful and nuanced thematic layering adds up to something more rewarding. The resulting film is unexpectedly dense, lovingly rendered, and occasionally laugh-out-loud hilarious.

Owing to confusion over a Hebrew name, the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra mistakenly catches a bus to a dusty town lacking even a hotel (although it does have a tiny roller disco). The band has a performance scheduled for the following day at a nearby city's Arab Cultural Center. No buses will arrive until the morning, however. They're effectively marooned with nothing to their names other than their crisp, sky-blue uniforms and their beloved instruments. Kolirin's characters fit into familiar archetypes, making this English-Hebrew-Arabic tale easy to follow, if a bit formulaic. The musicians include the severe, patriarchal conductor, Tawfiq (Sasson Gabai), the glum would-be-composer, Simon (Khalifa Natour), and the rash lothario, Haled (Saleh Bakri). The villagers they encounter encompass an alluring restaurant owner, Dina (Ronit Elkabetz), an unemployed family man, Itsik (Rubi Moskovitz), and a hopelessly awkward youth, Papi (Shlomi Avraham).

Fortunately for the hapless band, Dina is a generous soul. She offers up sleeping space for the stranded musicians at her restaurant, her apartment, and Itsik's home (despite his objections). Over the course of the evening, little dramas and amusing sketches unfold. Most of the musicians make themselves as unobtrusive as possible, while a few vainly wander the village in search of entertainment. It's fairly easy to anticipate how the various personalities will collide. Vigorous as a greyhound and sensual as a desert cat, Dina is an obvious foil for humorless Tawfiq, and naturally she starts chipping away at his stiff demeanor. Naturally, Simon and Itsik throw one another's failings and fortunes into perspective. Naturally, a smooth operator like Haled gives Papi some pointers on the art of seduction.

For the most part, The Band's Visit clicks into place like a smooth, shiny edifice of Lego bricks. On the surface, there's nothing subversive or exceptional in its components, but as a gratifying comedy its execution is essentially flawless. Consider one memorable scene in a roller disco involving Haled, Papi, and the girl the latter hopes to woo. The scene--captured in one long, ambitious shot--is so broad that it might have been plucked from a Mr. Bean sketch. However, the performances are so perfect that I found myself helplessly smiling, then giggling, then bursting with laughter. Kolirin and his actors have an astonishing sense of comedic timing. Furthermore, they often add a wounded, sympathetic element to characters that might have otherwise been one-note.

The Band's Visit could have been as sweet and forgettable as chewing gum, but Kolirin's script and direction masterfully add intricate subtext with economical strokes. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict--and by extension Jewish-Muslim antagonism--is never far from mind, but Kolirin isn't much interested in browbeating his audience, or in projecting geopolitics onto a personal story. (One blackly humorous exception concerns a musician and villager who wordlessly, ominously clash over the use of a pay phone.) Kolirin's touch is generally softer, and his ambitions broader. The Band's Visit alights on several dichotomies: urban and rural, tradition and liberality, utility and beauty. Fortunately, the film never feels overextended or aimless. Kolirin demonstrates remarkable talent in bestowing authentic thematic density on a tale as artificial as Nutrasweet. In short, he makes the contrived feel real.

The performances in The Band's Visit are quite good, never deeper than they absolutely need to be, but always unerring in tone. The natural standouts are Gabai and Elkabetz, who take command of the film's heart as Tawfiq and Dina. Gabai renders Tawfiq with the sort of empathetic care that should put most American comedic actors to shame. He knows exactly when to add a second of throat-closing hesitation in the conductor's responses, exactly how to blink, glance, and purse his lips to convey the man's starched and pressed emotional landscape. Elkabetz, all frizzed black hair and huge, heavy-lidded eyes, is almost unnaturally seductive--a perilous mirage--but her allure is all the stronger because the actress sells it so effectively. Dina's cosmopolitan, liberated nature repels as often as it attracts, and puts her at odds with her dismal, conservative environs.

The Band's Visit is sweet and sentimental, and a tad conventional in places. Nonetheless, it serves up a satisfying helping of sincere laughs, and discovers some justly touching moments. Refreshingly, the film is free of the pompous melodrama that afflicts most road comedies and anti-road comedies. Moreover, Kolirin is skilled at detecting the complicated, humane pulses in seemingly cartoonish characters. His is a comedic filmmaking talent to watch carefully. In the meantime, I suggest enjoying The Band's Visit for what it is: a savory confection to share with the people you care for.

Horton Hears a Who!

2008 // USA // Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino // March 20, 2008 // Theatrical Print

C - Dr. Seuss' stories have rarely translated smoothly to the big or small screen, perhaps because the charms of his works are entwined with the medium itself. There's a particular pleasure to paging through a Seuss book, to following the predictable rhythms aloud, to lingering over the whimsical illustrations. The occasional successful Seuss adaptations—the 1942 Looney Tunes short "Horton Hatches the Egg" and MGM's How the Grinch Stole Christmas! from 1966—rest as much on terrific, witty character design and voice talent as on the strength of the source material. I'll resist discussing the recent, manifestly awful live-action adaptations of Grinch and The Cat and the Hat.

20th Century Fox's Blue Sky Studios—creators of the successful Ice Age films—returns to the Seussian well with a feature-length computer animated adaptation of Horton Hears a Who!. It's a successful, if forgettable, children's film that strikes closer to the distinctive Seuss appeal than any other attempt in recent decades.

The plot should be familiar to most Americans under the age of fifty. Quite by happenstance, Horton the Elephant discovers a mote of dust that harbors an entire city, populated by minuscule people known as Whos. The story concerns Horton's efforts to convince other jungle animals of his discovery, and eventually to transport the Who world-speck to a relatively safe location. Meanwhile, the Mayor of Who-ville copes with the shocking revelation that a giant elephant holds his world in the tip of its trunk, and also with the calamities wrought by Horton's journey. The story is fairly thin gruel for a full-length feature, so the filmmakers necessarily bulk it up with wonderfully staged action set pieces (good) and mostly aimless characterization (bad).

The visual design of Horton is remarkable. I'll resist dubbing it a triumph only because it rests firmly on Seuss' stylistic shoulders. The Jungle of Wool and Who-ville each have distinct looks, and both are delightfully rendered in three dazzling dimensions. Unlike the Looney Tunes and MGM efforts of previous decades, Blue Sky bestows Seuss' vision with volume and mass, a trickier task than merely adding motion to his fine artwork. The animators also make some appealing stylistic decisions of their own. Their take on the Seussian world—particularly its plants, animals, and Who-constructed features—has a charming, elastic quality to it. The characters seem made of sponge, rubber, and fluff, yet this toylike artificially adds to the film's visual magic. Loosed from the sweet simplicity of Seuss' black lines and solid colors, the filmmakers are free to play with texture and light in all sorts of engaging ways.

The voice talent in Horton, meanwhile, is essentially colorless, although some of the secondary characters are smartly realized, if a little derivative. The only real misfire is Jim Carrey, who is poorly cast as Horton. Seuss' elephant necessitates a delicate blend of earnestness, naiveté, and miserable martyrdom. The performance falls short on all three points, although the animators pick up some of the slack, and Carrey fortunately shies away from his usual shtick. Horton is simply unmemorable, which is a serious misstep given that he is the story's hero. As the Mayor of Who-ville, Steve Carell adds a heftier dose of harried neuroticism to his usual screen persona, and manages to pull of the stronger lead performance. It's not top-tier voice acting by a long stretch, but Carell and the animators find the right groove for the story.

Seuss' book is somewhat thematically muddled, and the filmmakers haven't done much to focus it here. At times Horton seems to be alternately pro-faith and pro-rationalism, pro-bigotry and pro-tolerance. Mostly the film coasts on the hazards of conformity and a squishy affection for living things. Parents on the prowl for positive Message Films for their kids won't find much in Horton that is affirmative, but neither is there anything to offend. The appeal of the film really lies in the ambitious maturity of its double story. Stripped down to its bones, Horton is a science-fiction tale plopped into a Sunday funnies setting. Its primary virtue might just be its insistence that kids can keep up with the complex, intercutting tale of two linked, parallel worlds.

Horton mostly sidestep the sins that bedevil modern children's animated features—mostly. Wince-worthy pop culture references, cynical faux-hip-hop slang, and instances of scatological humor are blessedly rare. Nor are there many attempts at sly adult humor. Even when the film slips, it slips in a sublimely weird way. Take, for example, a baffling, throwaway Henry Kissinger reference, or an outrageous, seizure-inducing anime daydream that visits Horton. The film primarily sticks to the comedy basics, particularly old-fashioned slapstick and absurd wordplay from buffoonish characters.

The visual pop and sophisticated story of Horton Hears a Who! raise it a head above the usual kiddie fare. It's no animated masterpiece, nor is it a definitive Seuss adaptation, but it's richer than ninety minutes of mere benign diversion. In a landscape of otherwise worthless children's films, parents can feel comfortable with this admirable entry.

The Rape of Europa

2006 //  USA //  Richard Berge, Bonni Cohen, and Nicole Newham // March 9, 2008 // Theatrical Print

C - Whether or not any given viewer will find The Rape of Europa to be engaging will depend to a large extent on whether they find the subject matter itself engaging. The directors seem shamefully reluctant to utilize the medium of film to convey anything that couldn't be gleaned from the book of the same name by Lynn Nicholas. The result is a documentary that rests only a notch above the standard History Channel fare. The Nazis' plundering of European artwork and cultural heritage is a topic that, I will admit, fascinates me. The Rape of Europa is as comprehensive and courageous a treatment as one could expect in a two-hour feature. Anyone not dazzled by the subject at the outset, however, might find their interest fading as the film wears on.

What The Rape of Europa does quite well is condense the complexity of the Nazis' art crimes into an accessible package, all without sacrificing the rich detail necessary to convey the scale of the evil enterprise. There's no scrimping on the facts and figures here, and in many ways Rape plays as a sort of grim World War II travelogue, prowling from one culturally devastated city after another: Vienna, Warsaw, Krakow, Leningrad, Paris, Florence, Pisa, and Berlin itself, to name a few. At the same time, Rape takes the time to examine the motivations behind the Nazis' art crimes, from racial ideology to personal prestige. (Although linking Hitler's own failed artistic ambitions to the Reich's cultural agenda struck me as a little too glib.)

Rape features enough appealing anecdotes to keep the story from descending into textbook tedium. These include the battle over the ownership of a Gustav Klimt masterpiece, and a German official's journey to repatriate Torah crowns to the descendants of slain Jews. The film also makes excellent use of talking heads, tapping not only art experts and victims' families, but also local residents of the war-torn cities and American officials who acted as catalogers and preservers in the wake of the Allied victory. The only real weakness in the presentation is the narration by Joan Allen, whose voice is a touch too soft-spoken and colorless to convey the Romantic melancholy that this material needs.

One the whole, The Rape of Europa is a smart, slick, watertight documentary film product. And that's sort of the problem. It's clearly from the History Channel school of documentary filmmaking, and relies almost entirely on the intrinsic appeal of the subject matter to keep the film afloat. This wasn't a problem for me personally, since I can't get enough of this sort of dense historical confection, rich with archival footage and firsthand accounts. Yet when I look at the other documentaries that 2007 offered, there's something more than a little uninspired about The Rape of Europa. Just in the past few months, I've seen documentary films of stunning visual artistry (Into Great Silence, Manufactured Landscapes), films that employ their medium to marvelous effect (Operation Homecoming, My Kid Could Paint That), and films of astonishing humanity (God Grew Tired of Us). There have even been films with stories significantly less epic than The Rape of Europa that managed to be a more compelling (The King of Kong, Deep Water). In comparison, the directors' effort here seems, well, functional.

In the end, The Rape of Europa depends to a significant extent on its audience's curiosity. That said, viewers with even a modest willingness to be educated will discover a smooth journey with a sweeping view. The Rape of Europa isn't an artful film, but it the sort of finely-tuned audiovisual lecture that so many topics deserve (at the very least). The shameful art crimes of the Third Reich are no longer lacking in that regard.

Starting Out in the Evening

2007 // USA // Andrew Wagner // March 8, 2008 // Theatrical Print

B - Leonard Schiller is the vision one might have of a long-fallow New York novelist. He almost always wears a tie, even when creaking through his book-laden upper West Side apartment. He speaks deliberately and politely. He eats toast several times a day. He sits in front of his old manual typewriter (of course) and tries to work on his fifth novel. He is writing—keys are clacking, pages are accumulating—but he is not making any progress. Starting Out in the Evening is the story of Leonard's struggle to find his voice and understand his desires now that he is in the sunset of his life. It is also about how the people that surround him struggle just as mightily with their own lives. If this film is a bit stale in its generalities, its particulars crackle with life. Starting Out is blessedly free of cynicism where its own subject matter is concerned. This is a film about literature that loves literature, and a film about happiness that cares about its characters' happiness.

Much of the success of Starting Out rests on the broad shoulders of theatrical titan Frank Langella, who has appeared in several memorable character roles in recent films. Langella made his name playing Dracula on Broadway, and although he successfully clawed his way out of that role's typecasting shadow, there is always an undercurrent of virility in his performances, even at age 70. This is not a sagging old bag of bones, but a slab of varnished hardwood, full of knots and whorls. He's just moving a lot slower than he used to. Perhaps that is why, even shrouded in wool sweaters and dustily plodding through his autumn years, Langella's Leonard exudes something that attracts literature graduate student Heather Wolfe (Lauren Ambrose).

Naturally, Heather is impossibly gorgeous, erudite, and witty. Also naturally, she is writing her master's thesis on Leonard. In a more tedious film, the viewer would be asked to sit through Heather's intellectual seduction of Leonard, but Starting Out begins with the pair striking their arrangement. Leonard agrees to several interviews for the thesis, but asks that Heather refrain from authoring a gossip piece on his life. It must be about the work. Heather is so enthusiastic and scary-intelligent that Leonard immediately feels intimidated and bewildered. His false modesty doesn't faze her, and he finds himself self-consciously intrigued at the possibility that her work will re-awaken interest in his four previous novels. And then there is the unfinished fifth novel. Every hour spent in Heather's enticing company is an hour that Leonard is not writing.

Starting Out in the Evening's most significant flaw is the bland predictability of its broad outlines. Of course confused sexual attraction will blossom between a slumbering artist like Leonard and an academic firecracker like Heather. Of course Leonard's health problems, hinted at throughout the film, will become significant to the plot in the third act. I don't know how faithful Starting Out is to Brian Morton's original novel, but the film suffers from these sort of wheezy developments. This doesn't make Starting Out a bad film, just unexceptional where its plot is concerned.

Fortunately, the succulent little details—the bold choices that blossom in one scene after another—transform Starting Out into a genuinely good film. Who exactly to credit for these decisions is ambiguous. It's likely that the actors, director Andrew Wagner, writers Wagner and Fred Parnes, and production designer Carol Strober should all share some recognition. In my unkind moments, I'm inclined to regard the plot of Starting Out as truly forgettable, but the little things stick with me so strongly it's impossible to apply this descriptor to the film as a whole. There are moments of human beauty in this film that made the breath catch in my throat. When Leonard covers Heather's eyes with a hand because he cannot bear to look at the naked intellectual and sexual longing there, or when Heather anoints Leonard's forehead with honey in a spontaneous act of affection, it's hard to quibble over the believability of their attraction.

Almost all of the film's touching moments are between Leonard and Heather. There is an extensive secondary plot about Leonard's daughter Ariel (Lili Taylor) and her return to her ex-lover Casey (Adrian Lester) that weaves through Leonard's story. Ariel and Casey are complicated people, likable enough but self-centered and flawed. They are also much less fascinating than Leonard and Heather. Consequently, Warner never quite finds his footing when he attempts use the two relationships to reflect and refract one another.

One of the central pleasures to Starting Out in the Evening is how earnest—even naïve—it is about the mystery of art and its vital function in some people's lives. This is a film that quotes F. Scott Fitzgerald without a trace of sarcasm or contempt. When Leonard raises subtle doubts about Heather's intentions, she confesses in a tearful rush how one of his novels literally changed the course of her life. The characters in Starting Out love literature, as do the filmmakers. They understand how both consuming it and creating it can be a path to a sublime, mysterious sort of happiness.

This unabashed intellectual heat freshens Starting Out in the Evening's staleness, as do Langella's towering performance and the film's resolve to ferret splendid humanity from a trite story. In that, it is an unexpected success. This is a film for anyone who can appreciate the short distance between the bliss of academic delight and the bliss of new love. It's also a film for anyone who has contemplated how to start over, with a career, a relationship, or a life. And who hasn't done that?

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

2007  // Romania - Belgium // Christian Mungui // March 6, 2008 // Theatrical Print

A - It is 1987, and in a dingy dormitory room, a pair of Romanian women prepare for a trip of some kind. Who will feed the goldfish while we are gone? Where is the hair dryer? Should I bring my class notes so I can study? The genius of Christian Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is evident in these first few opening minutes. The scenes reveal something about the character of each of these women, Gabita and Otilia, but the portrait is not yet complete. Much more will come to light, about their strengths and flaws, about the casual menace of life in Communist Romania, and about what exactly they are planning. This is a remarkable film about how people achieve illicit aims in a world that is alternately indiscriminate and cruel. This is a film about abortion, and it is the first great movie of 2008.

Gabita is pregnant and does not want to be. She and her loyal roommate Otilia have developed a desperate plan to secure an abortion. Even in twenty-first century America, this endeavor would be littered with financial, logistical, and social stumbling blocks. In late Ceauşescu Romania, it is a kind of waking nightmare. The elements of their plan must come together in exactly right manner or the women will face prison, disease, or worse. Their scheme seems solid enough, and initially Otilia in particular seems relatively composed, as if she refuses to permit this little detour to interrupt her student routine. Then things begin to go wrong. The hotel room they booked for the procedure falls through. The doctor is agitated when they fail to follow his instructions precisely. Fears and lies come home to roost.

4 Months is drama distilled to kerosene potency. It is a film that winds the viewer so tight that it could almost be described as a thriller, but that would be both understatement and mis-characterization. Vicarious amusement has nothing to do with 4 Months' ambitions or achievements. I shared the sickening fear that hounded Otilia and Gabita's every move. I walked away harrowed and awestruck at the clawing dread of youth, womanhood, and captivity.

This is a disturbingly realistic film, but it is not naturalistic. Mungiu assembles every scene with a meticulous, burning understanding of what he wishes to achieve. His shots are long and ambitious, but rarely ostentatious. Both the actors and cinematographer Oleg Mutu's camera move through the film with an astonishing exactitude and clarity of purpose. This is not to say that 4 Months is a technically perfect film. When Mungiu occasionally switches to bouncy handheld shooting, he often assumes that lighting a scene as dimly as possible somehow makes it tenser. Of course, when you only have about $800,000 or so to spend on your film, corners have to be cut somewhere.

4 Months is constructed in a way that is at once utterly convincing and gloriously cinematic. The viewer is dropped into Otilia and Gabita's terrifying situation with no preamble. Understanding seeps in, and revelations emerge from gestures, whispers, and screams. Exposition occurs naturally, when the characters themselves need facts. Mungiu's storytelling is lean where it is required, but elsewhere he embellishes his film with techniques and details that tweak our expectations. Conversations occur out of focus in the background, or entirely off-screen. In one scene, Otilia discovers a pocketknife and steals it, but the weapon never appears again. The moment is crucial not for the plot, but for what it reveals about her character and Communist Romania.

There is a fascinating sequence in 4 Months that occurs as an interlude between the second and third acts, a sequence crucial to the film's thematic heart. Otilia must attend a birthday dinner for her boyfriend's mother, and to do so she leaves Gabita in a perilous situation. Mungiu constructs this sequence around an extended, unbroken shot of people conversing at a dinner table. Mungiu remains focused on Otilia for the entire shot, and my eyes refused to wander from the actress, Anamaria Marinca. The discussion at the table touches on parenting, education, and caustic Romanian class biases, but the reason for this shot--the idea of it--ies entirely within Marinca's eyes. This is captivating filmmaking.

Otilia, not Gabita, serves as the film's narrative center, and Marinca invests her with a spooky, resolute aura that engages for every moment that she is on screen. The other performances in 4 Months are merely satisfactory by comparison, but they serve the story so neatly it seems unsound to criticize them too harshly. Mungiu employs his characters as surgical tools, and he hones the performances through use.

Throughout its grim journey, 4 Months rests on an oblique but unashamed pro-choice foundation. To say that this is a "message film," however, undervalues the slow, steeping way it conveys its anger and melancholy. Gabita is no saintly victim. She does not deserve the shame that cripples her, but her failure to appreciate the consequences of her stupidity, cowardice, and panic borders on infuriating. It is Otilia who evolves over the course of the film, as she starts to reevaluate her identity as a friend, student, child, lover, and woman. To be sure, 4 Months will convince no religious conservatives of abortion's moral correctness. What it accomplishes is something far more viable and breathtaking: a moving work of art about the most intimate and frightening realms of human experience.

In Bruges

2007 // UK - USA // Martin McDonagh // February 28, 2008 // Theatrical Print

C - The somewhat misleading trailer for In Bruges promises a crime comedy in the vein of Guy Ritchie, albeit with a bit more arbitrary wackiness. The film's promotion seems tailored to an audience that will be tempted by absurdist dialogue, hammy comedic performances, and cold-blooded violence—plus a sassy dwarf! What In Bruges actually delivers is an ambitious, relentlessly black comedy, cobbled together with doses of medieval moralizing and existential rumination for the arthouse crowd. It's a pleasurable ride, and a promising feature film debut from playwright Martin McDonagh. Unfortunately, the gravity of In Bruges—which might have been substantial—is diminished by the film's meandering exploration of too many thematic sidestreets, not to mention a plot that teeters on its improbabilities by the end.

Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson are hit men Ray and Ken, newly arrived in the terminally quaint village of Bruges ("The most well-preserved medieval city in Belgium," Ken cheerfully explains.) Through flashbacks, we discover that the pair has recently botched an assassination in Ireland, and have been ordered to hide out for two weeks in Bruges until they hear from their employer, Harry. Ken exhibits a genuine interest in absorbing the town's winsome historical and cultural sights by day, but by night he insists on waiting dutifully by their hotel phone for Harry's call. Ray, meanwhile, sulks like a spoiled child as Ken drags him from one cathedral and museum to the next. When he's not throwing despondent tantrums, he's insulting strangers and getting into fistfights with alarming regularity. The first thing to truly capture Ray's attention in Bruges is the set of a movie being filmed in town, where he is enthralled by the sight of a dwarf actor (Jordan Prentice) ("They're shooting midgets!") and by a local blonde beauty (Clémence Poésy) lurking on the set.

Were I to describe the plot's trajectory any further, it would spoil one of the pleasures of In Bruges. The twists and turns are routine for this sort of violent, black comedy, but they are rendered with just the right amount of naked, robust emotion. When the dramatic body blows connect, they feel earned.

The characters are what truly elevate In Bruges from a potentially slipshod entry in the growing Hit Man Comedy genre to a solid piece of filmmaking. McDonagh's script and the excellent performances offer one unexpected surprise after another. Colin Farrell not only demonstrates that he is comfortable with comedy, but he discovers a persona that fits him like a wetsuit: a curious blend of cocky, live-wire agitation and wilting vulnerability. Brendan Gleeson easily slips into Ken's shoes, his clipped, nearly unintelligible brogue offering that blend of paternal warmth and grizzly bear nobility that is his hallmark. McDonagh also ushers him into unfamiliar territory on occasion, and Gleeson delivers splendid moments of sincere awe, stammering deceit, and snappish brooding.

As the ruthless and tightly-wound Harry, Ralph Fiennes seizes on the opportunity to revel in a role one left turn removed from his usual fare. Harry is violently neurotic, uneasily sentimental, and utterly humorless, but, as they say, he has his principles. The secondary performances run from the charming to outright misfires, but Prentice, with his marvelously expressive face and slightly arrhythmic delivery, is a standout as the dwarf actor Jimmy. A foul-mouthed, racist drug addict, Jimmy nonetheless possesses as strange sort of patience and affability.

McDonagh's writing has a sweet and often devastating humanity to it, and he dribbles In Bruges with the sort of stinging morsels that carry a playwright's stamp. Consider an early scene where Ray attempts to strike up a conversation with Poésy's character, Chloe. Having glimpsed her speaking with Jimmy on the film set, Ray informs Chloe that dwarves have a higher suicide rate than other people, rambling on for far too long about this ghoulish factoid. The scene is played for squirming comic effect, and it also reveals something about Chloe through her reactions. However, there is a painful weight in this ludicrous exchange that only becomes apparent later, when we learn that Ray has profound suicidal thoughts himself.

The characters of In Bruges are dense with intriguing crannies, but unfortunately McDonagh doesn't know what to do with them at times, especially during the film's final twenty minutes. In Bruges wears its intentions on its sleeve. It yearns to be a profound yet hip meditation on the nature of sin, guilt, and penance. Ray and Ken discuss such weighty matters openly, spurred by the medieval history that suffuses their surroundings. Occasionally McDonagh's script strikes the right chord, but mostly he is flailing for meaning within a genre that may not be ideally suited to his ambitions. The components of In Bruges never gel the way that he seems to intend. McDonagh picks up themes, fiddles with them, then sets them down and walks away. The film might have managed more mileage if McDonagh had forsworn the explicit theological and philosophical cud-chewing and kept the focus on his characters. Or perhaps if he had dropped the black comedy entirely and created the pointed, spiritually grotesque drama that is lurking somewhere within In Bruges.

Sheer implausibility inflicts the second critical wound to In Bruges. One expects a certain amount of ridiculous contrivance in a violent black comedy, where unexpected relationships are revealed and characters pop up at the most convenient (or inconvenient) moments. However, the final act of In Bruges relies on stretches that are positively outlandish, if not downright insulting, and far removed from the dry serendipity that characterizes the bulk of the film. It's not reassuring when I envision any reasonably competent action film director handling several key sequences better than McDonagh manages.

In Bruges is a film of bold intentions, and in some vital respects it succeeds in creating something fresh and unexpected. McDonagh mounts it with rich, memorable characters, coaxes some wonderful performances from the cast, and lets the story unfold against a gorgeous backdrop. McDonagh's writing is generally so enjoyable that it’s all the more objectionable when it fails to settle on a point worthy of such craftsmanship.

One warning for the sensitive: In Bruges is far more profane and violent than the film's marketing suggests. It boasts more "fucks" than any film since The Big Lebowski, and more blood than any film since Kill Bill Vol. 1. Leave the kids and your Mormon aunt at home.