I ended up working just shy of 12 hours today, so as the fireworks pop basically right outside my window, I had no desire to go see them. My skin is crispy and my brain is fried and I wanted to veg on something decent but not too challenging. I picked "In Bruges," which I had wanted to see for a long time and never got around to.
What a fooking brilliant movie.
I use "fooking" because In Bruges is about an Englishman (Brendan Gleeson) and an Irishman (Colin Ferrell) who both kill people for a living and both affect accent so thick they darn near drown in them. After a hit goes horribly wrong they are sent to Bruge, a tourist enclave in Belgium and told to lay low. Gleeson loves it. Ferrell is too itchy to appreciate anything much less the quaint charms of an old city. Plots twist, women and dwarfs are involved and what was meant to be a casual movie watching experience turned into full throttle yelling at the screen.
In Bruges is absurdest to a high degree...maybe absurdest isn't the right word for the first two acts. How about gleefully strange. Example: Ferrell meets a drug dealer and they go out on a date. Just when things begin to get thematically heavy, the Irishman blurts out "oy, they're shooting midgets over there," or something like it. Turns out there's a movie set with a dwarf on it and it's his favorite thing in Bruges. Like everything else, it turns out to be essential to the plot.
Speaking of the plot, this sucker gets very twisty without ever once for a second betraying characters. I guess that's what's most enjoyable about the movie - the way it ties everything together but never strays from the characters it loves.
It's not often I come across a gem like this anymore, as my movie going has dropped off considerably in the past few years. Even though I'm fried and am not articulating it well, this movie is fantastic and worth the view. Maybe more than one.
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