In Bruges

Every few years, there comes an actor who impresses us with his first and lands up in a series of movies, some of them good and some bad. But no matter how many good movies the actor is in, there is a saturation point where we just get bored with the actor. It happened to the very talented Mr Clive Owen recently. Jason Statham also fits the bill about a year ago. Colin Farell is not someone that I enjoy watching for this same reason. There was a stretch between late 2004 and early 2007 where every other major Hollywood movie featured him in a starring role. Most of the time, he got practically the same damn role in a different storyline. Despite the fact that I enjoyed a couple of his movies from that phase, I felt that the overdose of Colin Farell was going to kill his career. While others cheered as he moved from one big director to another, I waited for him to do the inevitable. Alexander was not the isolated flop of his career graph in that season. Suddenly, Colin Farell was not a part of major movie deals. We even got to see him on TV, as an Irish brawler in Scrubs. How hard, I was about to say, the mighty have fallen.

But wait, there is more. In 2009, a now-forgotten Colin Farell starred in a movie that does not involve a massive budget or visual effects. It can be billed as a comedy but that would create uncomfortable moments for both the viewers and the movie people. The movie would have been considered to appeal to such a niche audience that its production would have been treated as an artistic indulgence rather than a major Hollywood production. This movie, however, would make Colin Farell relevant again. Perhaps in his best role to date, Farell stars, nay, shines in the film-adaptation of Martin McDonagh's play, In Bruges.

In a day where movies are given awards based on "pull" and star value, one cannot help but be amazed at the deserving few that actually make it big in the scene. In Bruges deserves every award it has won. This movie is a defining moment in Dark Comedy, not only because of the intensity of the plot but also because of the excellent translation of the Pinter-esque Comedy of Menace without becoming too symbolic for the audience to appreciate. When a pregnant moment is heightened by the presence of a really pregnant woman, one cannot help but laugh; but it is not a happy laugh. It is a nervous, tentative, desperate laugh trying to make sense of the concept of Point of No Return.

In Bruges starts out as a clueless enough movie with two men arriving at an unknown town in Belgium. They await their orders. When a hit is wrongly executed by Farell, a chain of command snaps into place. A moment's mistake and the high cost of the same mistake makes up the second half of the movie. The most important thing that we learn from this movie, is the impossibility of either controlling the future as well as rewriting the past.

Last seen in Harry Potter as MadEye Moody, Brendon Gleeson steals the show with his near perfect performance. The two polarities of free-will (of what he wants to do) and discipline (to his master, Ralph Fiennes) are balanced in his single character. Brendon Gleeson as the veteran who understands the horror of Farell and is willing to save him at any cost is just as brilliant as the smooth and passionate Ralph Fiennes. Another actor from the Harry Potter continuity, Fiennes carries over a lot of the darkness from his more fantastical role.

The camera work is so fine, that it leaves an impression that the town must have been pretty for being captured thus. The music is not much to write home about. The editing and the writing is simply outstanding. Perhaps the quality of the movie is because the original play was written by the guy who directed it. Overall, I give In Bruges a regular total of 8.3 and on the Woody scale, it still scores a whopping 8.3