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List Price: $14.98 | | Label: Universal Studios
Salesrank: 1456
Released: June 24, 2008 |
| Our Price: $5.73 |
| Used Price: $1.99 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
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.
Description of In Bruges:
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
In Bruges Reviews:
Quirky, dark satire 
2009-10-16 - I enjoyed this movie and thought it was excellent, although it's not without its flaws. But then, how many movies are perfect? I didn't mind the violence some have objected to or the frequent use of the "f" word; after all, as someone pointed out, these are hit men and not choir boys. If that sort of profanity offends you then you probably need to stick to "I Love Lucy" and "Nancy Drew" reruns.
I found the movie quirky, funny, and even clever--perhaps a bit too self-consciousnessly clever in its attempt to knit so many diverse story threads into one cloth. The movie occasionally gets bogged down as a result in some side stories that could have been omitted, but I didn't mind that. There's enough entertainment between the quirky cast of oddball characters (which, besides the two hit men, include a racist dwarf), the fine acting by the two leads, the beautiful setting of Bruges (which I've visited and can vouch for as to its beauty), and the semi-demented dialog, that you're usually not bored.
The story line has been told so many times that I won't reprise it here, except to say that although the two hit men characters have been compared to the famous Travolta and Jackson duo in "Pulp Fiction," in fact they couldn't be more different. In contrast to the super cool, slick hit guys in that movie, these are a couple of quirky, neurotic, bumbling, sort of lovable thugs with enough weighty existential angst for a post-modern novel. The one similarity is the verbose dialog between the two main characters.
The movie is a bit schizoid in that the last half gets ever more surrealistic and fantastic, especially in regard to the final scene, whose outcome as shown is very unlikely (I won't say anymore so as not to provide any spoilers). But then, I saw the movie as a purely entertaining dark satire about two hit men whose lives go completely to sh_t in a matter of minutes during a botched job and then are left flapping trying to pick up the pieces, rather than a realistic portrayal of how such a situation would probably turn out.
The negative reviews here often panned the movie because of its lack of realism; but, and I could be wrong, I think the movie is really a more than competent satire and send up of what has come to be called the "hit man comedy." If you keep that in mind and don't take it too seriously you might enjoy the movie's many strengths and not get too bent about its flaws, which aren't that serious and can be overlooked since the rest of the movie is strong.
Great Independent Film! 
2009-10-09 - After personally spending a weekend in Bruges, it was suggested that I see the movie "In Bruges". Curious and wanting to see the extraordinary views again, I purchased the film. I was not only pleased with the great views of Bruges...it was a really GOOD movie. You will get caught up in the characters search for moral grounds, albeit while working as professional hitmen! (has strong language and violence)
Hilarious film marred by terrible trailer
2009-09-26 - The Bottom Line:
In Bruges is a hilariously-written and acted movie about two incredibly different Irish hitmen hiding out in a Belgian tourist city that's far far better than the previews indicated; with perfect comic performances by Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, and Ralph Fiennes, this is a very good movie whose ending admittedly wraps things up a tad too neatly but remains very watchable and very good.
3/4
Tottenham Isn't in My Travel Plans...
2009-09-21 - ... but I laughed out loud at the conscience-stricken killer's suggestion that it was a circle closer to Hell than Bruges. When I laugh out loud at a film I'm watching by myself -- and I did laugh out loud more than once -- that film automatically gets my five-star rating.
I'm not gonna waste a lot of college-seminar training on an exegesis of this flick. I take it to be a spoof of the genre, a totally tongue-in-cheek satire of fashionable amorality. Some reviewers have compared it to Tarantino. Okay, but it reminded me more of the Coen Brothers, though it wasn't quite THAT funny and it didn't have the ripples of mordant social criticism of a Coen flick.
I prefer NOT to recognize actors. When I don't recognize them, I can assume they're acting. The only one I recognized in In Bruges was Ralph Fiennes; I knew I'd seen him before but I couldn't have said when or where. His was the comic villain role and he played it with gruesome delight. Colin Farrell seems to be a household name for other reviewers; I thought he was uproarious -- glum, crass, stupid, Sunday-schoolish -- as the hit man who botched his first hit and missed his merit badge for amorality. Brendan Gleeson was a jolly old elf of a veteran killer with a heart of gold. The city of Bruges played its role of tainted beauty to perfection, an old Medieval tart all gaudied up for tourist johns. I hope the jade got beaucoup Euros for selling itself to the producers of this film.
Boring and Distasteful 
2009-09-15 - This is essentially a movie about people who are unpleasant and uninteresting, in which nothing of significance happens but in which there is plenty of violence. On the plus side the actors do sterling work with a third-rate script and Bruges itself is very pretty. On the minus side is the rest of the movie. If you are insensitive to pointless acts of violence and have an interest in the empty lives of small-time thugs, this is a great movie. Otherwise watching paint dry would be a more rewarding use of one's time.
