Monday, May 21, 2012

24/50x2: In Bruges

When I first started watching this I could have sworn it was a Harry Potter reunion party. Almost like someone said, "Hey, there is this film being made over here. We can do it in between shots." And a bunch of them listened.

So, In Bruges is about a pair of hitmen, Ray (Colin Farrell), who is very new to the job and his partner, Ken (Brendan Gleeson), who has been around for awhile.

After a job, the two are sent to Bruges by their boss, Harry Waters (Ralph Fiennes) and told to wait there until he contacts them with further instructions.

For Ken, it is great. He takes in the sights and actually enjoys being on leave. Ray, though, has been dealing with the previous job where in he accidentally killed a young child during it.

He befriends Chloe (Clemence Poesy), who he believes is working on a movie being filmed locally, but as it turns out she is a drug dealer and thief. But the two actually hit it off quite well.

Still, he can't seem to shake the murder of the child. Ken receives a call from Harry and is given his next assignment - to kill Ray. Apparently there is a code for killers as well - there is no forgiveness of killing a child. Ken follows Ray to a local park and watches him - just as he is about to sneak up on him and put a bullet in his head, Ray pulls a gun up to his own head and is about to commit suicide, but Ken stops him.

Ken puts Ray on a train and tells him not to return. He would deal with Harry.

The next part of the film is Harry coming after both Ken and Ray to clean up their mistakes, and it is actually a pretty fun and wild ride.

I say this is a bit of a Harry Potter reunion because it has three of its stars in it. Poesey played Fleur, Gleeson, of course, was Mad Eye and everyone knows Fiennes was Voldemort.

It was fun seeing all of them together again. And in such a different type of film. This was mostly a dramatic film, with some high points of action and some good comedy sprinkled throughout. As I said, a fun little ride for a film that sort of flew under the radar upon its release.

Grade:

1 comment:

  1. I love this movie. It took me a second viewing to really love it, since it's a much darker comedy than I was expecting in the first viewing. But yeah, I think it's pretty fantastic, and the writing is top notch.

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