theinferior4+1 - In Bruges

News on Diabolo Cody's (Juno) script in progress: it concerns a demonic cheerleader. Jesus. The Anti-Buffy. And now we have years of this shit to look forward to. It may appear I'm being especially hard on her, but she's just the poster child for what strikes me a disturbing trend in the industry, i,e., stuffing characters full of lines they are unlikely to say in order to allow the scriptwriter to get off (or attempt to get off) a few zingers. Another recent film that does this is In Bruges, starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, which I just saw this afternoon. It's supposed to be a black comedy about two hit men hiding out in Bruges, Belgium, but like Juno tries way too hard to be hip and hilarious. Though there are some good things in the movie--for one, Farrell's performance almost makes me forgive him for Alexander, and Gleeson is, as always, solid, but saying that is like praising a flatulent for dropping an odorless fart. The director, ex-playwright Martin McDonagh, has nothing even marginally original to say. He offers us yet another odd-couple hitman team who are on temporary vacation in Bruges, ordered to do so because of a botched hit in London, and are forced to shit out one-liners and monologues so as to display McDonagh's wit and etc. Some of his wit involves midgets and dwarves--there are at least half-a-dozen references to Herve Villechaise--and overweight Americans and pansy Canadians. Some of it hits the mark and McDonagh is glib to a fault, but it's all so tired and done-before (like Juno's I'm a planet line, not to mention many other Cody lines). Ralph Fiennes, their hit-boss, who alternates between doing Mamet and doing a Ben Kingsley-in-Sexy Beast impression, breaks up the funfest by ordering Gleeson to off Farrell and, of course, a warm father-son relationship then develops between the two. Then there's the alternation between ultraviolence and shits-and-giggles that Tarantino popularized, then wore out...and then the imitators had their way with the trope. And hey, why not throw in a dream sequence with a dwarf--everyone knows dwarves are not only damn funny, they're symbols of...well, whatever you want them to be. Like with David Lynch. McDonagh attempts to inject a moral into his story by laying on some Christian symbolism and making an attempt to redeem Farrell's character, but the character is so vile you don't want him redeemed. This is the cinematic equivalent of a guy who tells fag jokes to illustrate society's insensivity to gays. It's got a lot of style and swagger, and that makes it easy to mistake for an engaging film; but it's all show and no substance. I'm thinking its main value is as a test-mention it and if people say they like it, excuse yourself and walk quickly away. Black comedy? If this is black comedy, so is cleaning out a sewer.