Bruges at Christ­mas time. A lovely medi­eval pre­served town with a fest­ive spirit and now blessed with two hit men lay­ing low at a quaint hotel. How can one react to this movie? In Bruges is a treat!!

Char­ac­ter­iz­a­tion and the char­ac­ters are superb. Dia­logue is witty and fast paced. The scenery of Bruges is shot mag­ni­fi­cently. There are little 10 second vign­ette shots that work very well. The movie fol­lows the two hit men tak­ing refuse fol­low­ing a botched job. The hunker down to await a call. As Vladi­mir and Estragon, Ray (Colin Far­rell) and Ken (Brendan Gleason) adopt enter­tainly dif­fer­ent approaches to their enforced tour­ism. Maybe its just the Irish way, but I feel some Beck­ett here.

This is Colin Far­rell at his best. I haven’t been a fan in the past, but can’t help but applaud his per­form­ance in this one. He is emotive, totally empath­etic and draws you right into his char­ac­ter. Ray is deeply troubled, but he has a gritty reserve and a bub­bling tem­per and per­fect chem­istry with Brendan Gleason’s Ken. As Ray decides whether he can suf­fer an over­heard slight, the inner ten­sion is is delivered without sug­gest­ing that he’s being coached through it. He is Ray, and he is right on the edge.

Brendan Gleason is always good. I have never seen him in a role I didn’t appre­ci­ate. Together, Gleason’s reflect­ive, halt­ing, and calm deliv­ery matches supremely with Farrell’s sta­catto, dis­dain­ful, remorse­ful, banter. Espe­cially when he steps out of it and loses it with Ray. It rein­forces the truth of his per­form­ance. The devel­op­ment of the Ken’s char­ac­ter is a joy to observe. Start­ing from the unques­tioned loyal lackey, he snaps dur­ing the story arc of the plot dis­cov­ers him­self. I saw a whole new side of Gleason in this film.

Ralph Feinnes gets just enough screen time to make a role, but Ciarán Hinds moment­ary appear­ance, although an import­ant plot points seems strangely under exploited (yes, Rome is my ref­er­ence point for Hinds).

The facts of the case are teased out at a per­fect pace — little nug­gets dropped here and there, often in an under­played fash­ion. Clearly its about redemp­tion, and con­sid­er­ing (or recon­sid­er­ing) ones’ own life prin­ciples. Although there is out­right Cana­dian bash­ing, it’s just exactly what a Cana­dian would do and the bash­ing (lit­eral as well as fig­ur­at­ive) is deserved.

Best line: “If I’d grown up on a farm and was retarded, Bruges might impress me, but I didn’t, so it doesn’t.” You laugh at things that you wouldn’t out­side of a darkened theatre, and although you see Gleason’s pen­ul­tim­ate moment approach­ing, it is timed and cho­reo­graphed with bril­liant atten­tion to the craft (I wasn’t laugh­ing at that one by the way).There are some viol­ent scenes in the movie and I have yet to quite fig­ure out why they are as graphic as they are. No, still don’t have a con­sidered answer for that — still think­ing. And in that this is a cool flick. It does make you think and pon­der, and yet has you laugh­ing, and fol­low­ing the action (and often inac­tion that makes you won­der too).

I give this a 4 for 5. Bril­liantly acted, very well writ­ten and dir­ec­ted and an abso­lutely sat­is­fy­ing. No les­son, no pos­it­ive mes­sage, although the self­less acts do add a real warmth to the movie. But what can I pos­sibly say cred­ibly, last time I was in Bruges I watched King Ralph in Dutch — yes the height of culture ;-)

Thanks to Will for the hint to go catch this one. I pass it along.