The Dark Magical Comedy of "In Bruges"

International actors working in Hollywood can often charm and persuade us when featured in big-budget blockbuster films. But in movies that showcase their best qualities in their native tongues--or accents--with scripts closer to wherever they call home, they sometimes shine and dazzle in ways that astound us. That seems to be the case with Colin Farrell as the emotionally wired Irish hit-man Ray in director Martin McDonagh's dark and twisted comedy, In Bruges.

If Farrell has made a name for himself (not to mention some very decent salaries) based more on his "hunk factor" and previous bad-boy image than his talent, his performance in this film reveals him to be a gifted actor indeed. Arguably, it may very well be his finest since his turn as the American soldier Private Roland Bozz in director Joel Schumacher's troubling war film, Tigerland. His role for In Bruges could not be more different. As the comfortably Irish-brogue speaking Ray, he joins fellow hit-man Ken (performed brilliantly by Brendan Gleeson of Harry Potter fame) for his first kill in the small elegant city of Bruges in Brussels. Naturally it goes all wrong and in the course of murdering his intended target--a priest, actually--he accidentally kills a child.

Whereas he feels no remorse over killing the priest, who may or may not have been guilty of some monstrous transgression, the death of the child breaks a code of hit-man honor for which Ray cannot forgive himself. Neither can Ralph Fiennes as Harry Waters, the man who hired him. Distraught and suicidal, Ray nevertheless pursues a romance with the beautiful Chloe (Clemence Poesy) whom he considers a wonderfully nice girl because in her own drug-dealing way she's every bit as gangster as he is. She even forgives him when he steals her illicit stash of pharmaceuticals and goes on a partying binge with partner Ken and the aloofly arrogant movie star dwarf named Jimmy, played impressively by Jordan Prentice.

As amazingly weird and macabre as In Bruges is, the movie in its essence--right up to the shocking end-- is mostly about exercising respect for established principles, and the struggle to preserve a sense of innocence in a world where innocence is literally murdered every day. Like Farrell, Gleeson and Fiennes deliver exceptional performances in their portrayals of complicated characters who are brutally ruthless and yet, at the same time, unnervingly sensitive and emotionally vulnerable. We somehow find ourselves empathizing with them when probably we should be denouncing them, and laughing when it might make more sense to shed a tear or two.

by Author-Poet Aberjhani
author of "The American Poet Who Went Home Again"
and "ELEMENTAL, The Power of Illuminated Love"