Four years ago with his career arguably at its lowest ebb, Colin Farrell was thrown a welcome lifeline in Martin McDonagh's directorial debut, In Bruges. The irreverent hit-man comedy was unabashedly brutal in just about every way imaginable, while smirking at his evilly with a pitch black sense of humor. As great as Farrell was, arguably the best thing he's ever done, it was McDonagh's vulgar, rapid-fire writing that people were clamoring for more of.
Seven Psychopaths delivers the same in-your-face, unconventional style as In Bruges, only a lot more of it. Like seven times as much insanity. A former playwright, McDonagh definitely brings a certain level of uber-violent theatricality to the crazy, meta proceedings. Meta in the sense that Seven Psychopaths doesn't just revolve around your run-of-the-mill collection of weirdos. All the psycho-analyzing weirdness of Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation collides with the bravado and energy of Quentin Tarantino, filtered through McDonagh's demented outlook. It's a crazy, messy ride that doesn't go where one might expect, and that's all part of the fun.
Farrell turns in another career-best performance as Marty, a struggling writer with an alcohol problem, a girlfriend(Abbie Cornish) problem, and a severe case of writer's block. He's got a fantastic idea for a story called 'Seven Psychopaths', about...well, seven different extremely violent psychopaths, but he doesn't want any violence in it. No wonder he's stuck. Only a drunk could come up with something like that, at least that's what Marty's zany and twisted friend Billy(Sam Rockwell) thinks. He wants Marty to quit drinking and really knuckle down on the story, and as a form of "motivation", Billy does terrible things like put an ad in the newspaper looking for local psychos and stealing the prized Shih-Tzu of a mob boss. Not just any mob boss, Charlie Costello(Woody Harrelson) is a certifiable loon, and the murderous rampage he goes on to retrieve his pooch sends a number of perfect wackos into Marty's orbit.Some of these crazies are figments of Marty's own fertile imagination, like the terrorist Buddhist monk and vengeance-seeking Quaker(played by Harry Dean Stanton no less!), while others are uncomfortably close to home. Christopher Walken is more inspired than ever as Hans, Billy's dog-knapping associate who's equal parts madness and tranquility. The assemblage of oddballs, which includes Tom Waits as a rabbit-carrying serial killer, are so far out that Walken is the calm epicenter, as scary as that might be. Of course he does get his moments to cut loose("F**k the police! F**k 'em!!").
McDonagh hits his stride when all of his characters get to bounce angry rants and inconceivable notions off one another. The first scene alone(featuring a pair of Boardwalk Empire stars in cameos) is a perfect example of the deeply offensive and comically bloody future that awaits, as two killers jabber back and forth about...well, violence, before falling victim to it. Those who didn't dig McDonagh's writing for In Bruges likely won't get into it here, either. When he sticks to a straight line story, Seven Psychopaths is pure gold, but McDonagh is reaching for something a bit more ambitious this time and occasionally runs into some pitfalls.
It's unclear whether Marty is a stand-in of sorts for McDonagh, gleefully riffing on his own comic woes in trying to craft a Tarantino-style L.A. action film with mobsters, gangsters, and other assorted gun-packin' goons. Truthfully it doesn't matter, as McDonagh rips into the genre with obvious relish, in particular the excessive violence and the piss-poor treatment of women. In pursuit of that latter point, some fans will be disappointed by the lackluster appearances of Cornish and Olga Kurylenko. Animals lives are valued far more than females, let's just say that. At some point it becomes clear that a fierce meta tug of war for control of the story is taking place, as Marty and Billy alternately try to calm and exacerbate the cycle of violence. McDonagh's smartly written script does get a little messy at times with so many characters dashing in and out. On occasion McDonagh too readily indulges in dull flights of fancy, delving for far too long in side stories about characters who ultimately prove inconsequential to the plot. The cast is nearly flawless, and Farrell is brilliant in what is essentially the same sort of straight-man role Brendan Gleeson played in In Bruges. Rockwell seems to be channeling a more insane version of his Chuck Barris in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and Walken hasn't been this good in ages. Harrelson, too, fits in like a glove as the terrifyingly bipolar crime boss.
There have been untold movies about writers and writer's block, but none quite as vicious, unpredictable, and funny as Seven Psychopaths. McDonagh and Farrell are now unblemished as a duo, and the stakes are only going to go up from here. Refusing to compromise his vulgar vision has worked so far for McDonagh, so why fix what isn't broken?
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