“After I killed him, I dropped the gun in the Thames, washed the residue off me hands in the bathroom of a Burger King, and walked home to wait for instructions. Shortly thereafter the instructions came through – “Get the fuck out of London, you dumb fucks. Get to Bruges.” I didn’t even know where Bruges fucking was. It’s in Belgium.”

The opening narration to 2008’s In Bruges serves as a master class in distilling the essential plot and thematic elements of a film into a minute’s worth of exposition. We know our narrator has committed a murder at the behest of someone else but things didn’t go as planned, forcing him into hiding. He’s not alone though and between his thick Irish accent and the mention of Belgium and the Thames, it’s established that the story is European in origin. The peaceful evening opening shots of the titular small town of Bruges contrast sharply with our narrator’s brusque vernacular, such that we know he’s not being put into protection so much as he’s being put into exile. Finally, that we are witnessing his punishment and not his actions exposes that In Bruges is more occupied with consequences than actions, and what follows is a wonderfully original little morality play of assassins, existence and tourism.

When the title card draws up we hear our first piece of dialogue; “Bruges is a shithole,” contends Ray (Colin Farrell), our narrator and newly initiated hitman. “Bruges is not a shithole,” responds his partner and semi-mentor Ken (Brendan Gleeson), a man of the same profession but many years and kills Ray’s senior. Despite differing views on the quality of their getaway, Ray and Ken aren’t a poorly matched odd-couple, they just deal with waiting to hear of their fate with differing tact. Ken, the more level-headed of the two, embraces the prospect of two-weeks in the fairytale-town as a kind of reprieve from a life too long lived; Gleeson’s contentedness masks a world-weariness that’s palpable when he’s not busy baby-sitting his ward. Ray, the younger man, would much rather pass the time getting pissed at the pub than spend it admiring the culture and architecture of a sleepy little town no one has ever heard of. Even when corralled by Ken into seeing the sights, Ray finds a way to ruin the local idyll for not just his partner, but a good number of people from across the world that happen to have come to Bruges.

As it happens, Ray’s skittish behaviour is as much a product of guilt as it is boredom. It turns out that Ray committed two murders on the assignment mentioned in the prologue, one intended and one accidental. He shows no regret over killing his intended target; he’s a hitman, he’s trained for that. What’s haunting him is the life he didn’t mean to take, and it’s Ray’s internal struggle over what he deserves for his actions that forms a foundation for In Bruges’ existential leanings. Bruges starts as an unassuming hideout but as the two outlaws explore it, all manner of symbolic imagery give the town an ethereal quality. The medieval architecture and Christian artwork convey a spiritual atmosphere and in turn, Ken and Ray’s discussions of their work develop a fascinating subtext. The only murder Ken regrets, also accidental, is that of an elderly lollipop salesman who came at him with a bottle but it’s written-off by Ray as self-defence since a bottle is a deadly weapon. “Well, technically your bare hands can kill someone too,” replies Ken, “what if he knew karate?”

The pitch-black humour undercuts much of the deeper questioning posed by the two leads, yet there's a fanciful poetry to this shaggy, morbid story. Whether it’s the author, God, or fate, there’s a higher power guiding the characters, be it in the form of Ray and Ken’s forced exile, or the various folk that populate the town at the time of their arrival. There’s a dwarf actor shooting a dream sequence featuring all manner of extras dressed in animal skin, as well as his dealer, a beautiful Belgian girl who catches Ray’s fancy, and numerous other small characters that nonetheless develop a Shakespearean level of intentional and unintentional involvement in the development of the story. The connectedness of the storytelling, when combined with the singular location, makes the film appear as though it could be adapted to the stage, unsurprising given the directors history in the theatre, and In Bruges is at its most cinematic during its later action sequences. When mob boss Harry decides to take care of Ray’s mistake personally (his reason’s being quite hilariously justified), the film’s third act features a few shoot-out and chase set pieces but given the well-developed characters and heady themes, there’s a weight to the violence that’s refreshing for the genre. In particular, the rarity and import given to guns makes them appear not as disposable thrill machines but as necessary elements of the plot and the deaths they bring are powerful because the film maintains such a modest body count.

With all the veiled musing over death and existence, it’s easy to forget that In Bruges is often brilliantly funny. While Ray’s flagrantly un-PC attitude brings out some great moments (such as the dwarf actor’s tirade about the inevitability of a global race war), the film is welcomingly as interested in subjects such as the banality of a career in professional assassination. When Ken has to pantomime the presence of Ray while on the phone with his boss, Gleeson’s performance wrings every laugh out of the quietly humiliating lengths one will go to in order to placate their superior, even if they happen to be a deadly killer. The script is chockfull of little character details, such that even Ralph Fiennes manages to give off a sense of not just humanity, but normalcy to his portrayal of the gangster Harry, a role that easily could have devolved into caricature. With this film, writer-director Martin McDonagh has established himself as a confident and energetic presence both on the page and behind the camera and his next feature will no doubt draw much anticipation. It’s also destined for scrutiny though because In Bruges is a tough act to follow. It’s funny and well-acted but also maintains a depth and emotional core largely unseen in comedy crime-fiction, and the result is a wholly-unexpected but eminently enjoyable little masterpiece.

5 out of 5

In Bruges

2008, UK

Directed by Martin McDonagh

When I first watched The Hangover, I remember there being a niggling sense of disbelief stuck in the back of my head for much of the film. It wasn’t the tiger in the bathroom or the stolen baby mind you; just about all manner of hijinx is fair game in my book when it comes to gross-out comedies. No, what stuck out was how implausible it seemed that the three leads were in anyway friends. I tried to imagine how these guys might hang out when not forced into some crazy adventure but nothing would come to mind, and without that relationship, the buddy-comedy nature of the premise was lost. Instead of cohering, the character archetypes (the straight man, the good-looking one and the wild card, who in this case starts as the new guy before being accepted in the group by film’s end) conflicted so heavily that instead of creating a great comedic unit it broke down into a kind of masochistic-pissing contest to see who could endure the worse abuse for a chuckle.

When looking at Horrible Bosses, a new comedy starring Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day, the characters fill moulds similar to those of The Hangover but with a far more palpable chemistry. There’s little back-story explaining why these three mid-level employees meet up at the bar every night to complain about what sort of humiliation their bosses have put them through that day, and it’s not needed. Instead of trying to outdo one another, the characters bounce off each other with the kind of ease that’s earned from being friends with someone for many years, and it makes sense that they can go from joking to slap-fighting and back again in the same scene without a moment’s pause. Establishing this kind of relationship is paramount to the film’s jovial tone but it's also the foundation of the film's premise, as it has to be believed that these three would trust each other enough to make a pact to commit murder, the intended targets of said murders being each character’s titular boss.

It’s a pitfall-riddled premise, as you need extremely likeable leads and monstrously unsympathetic villains if you want to mine the act of taking another person’s life for humour, and although the plight of the affable leads is clearly identifiable, the film goes out of its way to reinforce the latter requirement almost to a fault. One boss (played convincingly by Colin Farrell), a raging cokehead, plans to dump chemical waste in Bolivian rivers, while another is a vamp trying to black-mail the recently engaged Dale (Day) into an affair. Finally, there’s Kevin Spacey as an unflinchingly awful sales president who’s even more narcissistic and psychotic than Spacey was as Superman nemesis Lex Luthor. While it's commendable that the film wants to get into its potential filled plot quickly, the early scenes with the bosses often feel more like table setting than comedy.

That being said, once Horrible Bosses get's moving, there's rarely a dull moment. Beyond an overt callout to Strangers on a Train, there's a vaguely Hitchcockian complexity to the way the plan of the working stiffs unfurls before inevitably going awry and it's refreshing to see a comedy in which just about every scene is plot relevant. It also helps that the film is often just as funny as one might hope. The ineptitude of the would-be assassins offers a myriad of great gags alone and the aforementioned table dressing pays off nicely one way or another, often in the form of puke, ass and dick jokes. The film certainly earns it's R-rating but never relies on shock value as a substitute an actually joke and some of the funniest moments needn't require the R-rating at all; Day is a masterfully capable physical comedian and can someone turn a car seat into a great prop.

The strength of the script is largely brought out by the impressive star-power Horrible Bosses has at its disposal. Spacey makes for a surprisingly intimidating villain and Aniston impresses for the first time in a decade thanks to playing a character so wildly against type it almost makes her litany of shoddy romantic comedies over the last few years justified. And while Bateman and Sudeikis both hold their own, they're both pretty much dwarfed by Charlie Day. Day's made a name for himself playing the chubby idiot in supporting roles and on TV and it would be easy to blame him for playing some variation of the same character if that character weren't so incredibly funny. He finds the right pitch for every punch line, from mumbling excuse making to a yelling style that's most accurately described as squawking, but he never brings his character past the point of caricature, there's always some kind of twisted logic behind his many screw-ups. It’s a great performance and shows signs of being a breakout role akin to the kind Zach Galifianakis had in The Hangover (to stretch that comparison a bit further).

For as ominous as the set-up may be, there are bound to be some disappointed that the film doesn’t attempt to go darker. In the hands of the Coen brothers, the final product would no doubt have been a grimmer and more surreal morality play, which in itself sounds intriguing and may have perhaps resulted in a better movie, but certainly not a funnier one. It is summer after all and director Seth Gordon focuses strictly on maximizing the laughs per minute ratio while maintaining the film’s lively pace. It’s as if the director set out to prove that he could make a film that, if absolutely nothing else, will make you laugh, a modest goal perhaps but a completely satisfied one. After a brisk 100 minutes, rather than finishing with sentimentality or sequel baiting, the film does what it does best and goes out on a joke. Gordon knows the score; if you want your comedy to be remembered, just remember to be funny first. It may sound counter-intuitive, but even with all the body fluids, violence and murder, Horrible Bosses is a clean, efficient summer comedy at just about its finest.

4 out of 5