In Bruges

Tonight's lesson: never judge a movie by its trailer. Watching the trailer for 'In Bruges' some months back was painful. There's nothing worse than having something awful BLASTED at you (which i why I ALWAYS try to be late to a movie). Though within the next few weeks I was scratching my head in confusion. Most of the reviews I read were unanimously positive and the film was being called a black comedy; which leads one to believe that it's both dark AND funny!! They were right.
Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson are hitmen hiding out in the Belgian town awaiting word from Harry, the boss man. The jokes start in the clash between Gleeson's enthusiasm over the town's history and Farrell's childish boredom. They come across a movie set which brings Farrell a love interest in the form of Clemence Poesy and brings us midget jokes in the form of Jordan Prentice. Most of the laughs seem to revolve around midgets (sorry. dwarfs) and the abundance of the word 'fuck', but Prentice is funny enough on his own to make us quickly forget his size and...well, 'fuck' is maybe the greatest word in the english language. In a wise move, Harry spends the first half of the film only being alluded to in conversation and heard on the other end of the phone. When we finally see him though, it feels like a strange relief to be looking at Ralph Fiennes. I've always liked Fiennes, but seeing him as Spielberg's nazi in 'Schindler's List' and Minghella's (RIP) dashing hero in 'The English Patient' never left an inch of room for comic potential in my mind. Here he provides some of the film's best laughs with his thick-as-molasses English accent and short fuse.
For all the laughs, it wouldn't be a black comedy without the black, and the film has enough macabre grimness to spare. There's plenty of blood and open wounds to quickly remove the smiles from our faces - a dizzying effect. One particularly effective scene has us laughing at the two leads confusion over whether to call a situation a botched murder or a suicide attempt one minute. The next we feel awkward still having a smile on our faces as Farrell bottoms out over a hit gone horribly wrong. Farrell's cigarette smoking, potty-mouthed persona always turned me off; but here he anchors the film with a blend of twitchy comedy self-loathing tragedy.
See also 'Grosse Pointe Blank' for a dark, romantic comedy revolving around hitmen. One of my favorites.