February 10, 2008 [In Bruges]

Bogart as Sam Spade notes, "The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter." And there I am, In Bruges, the hardboiled pump primed, and those two crooks really have at it, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson—and lest I forget, their boss Ralph Fiennes—straightfaced and muttering or exclaiming, puzzling over the other, maneuvering their way toward gunplay, betrayal, and retribution—with cockeyed justice skittering 'round the corner like Chaplin escaping a Tommygun. And it's not just the accent—although our Stateside ears love the sounds of the folk of the British Isles—the actors, to be exact, the way they train them over there, declamatory and offhand at once. No, their dilemma holds me as well, the pain that Farrell's Ray bears, a tough guy who makes one false move in a world where one is all it takes, then out go the lights. And Gleeson's pain, the older man, Ken, in a fockin' bind over Ray's mistake, their Code a front—but unyielding, demanding its due.

And of course there's Bruges itself, hilariously scorned by Ray—but almost a bully in its assertion of its absolutely marvelous self, the prettiest postcards of all come to life, the imaginary blessed childhood of a hood standing in as one last fling for doomed Ray—and once more, the joke's on him and his boss, he hates it like poison, this, his last happy hour.

In Bruges may owe much to Pulp Fiction—and maybe, by extension, Mickey Spillane—in its ability to show little concern for our loyalties—ready as such things are to kill 'em off at a moment's notice—but it still knows that the swaggering irony of crime comedy is itself a front for the crying shame of hitmen and their victims and all us innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire; and in the end the movie feels bad for just about everybody, a kind of promiscuously forgiving morality that wishes no one had to get it, even when they should.