My Review: Seven Psychopaths (7/10)

¨I´m sick of all these stereotypical Hollywood murderer scumbag type psychopath movies. I don’t want it to be one more film about guys with guns in their hands.¨

This is one weird, strange, unique, and messy movie as the title suggests. At times the film seems to be a masterpiece, at other it simply wonders off too much. I was a bit disappointed with how things turned out, but it was still a great ride. Martin McDonagh is perhaps one of the best contemporary playwriters; I had a blast with his film In Bruges and had huge expectations for this one considering the impressive ensemble cast, but I guess my expectations were set too high because this film didn’t work as well as I would have liked. McDonagh does succeed in creating original characters as he plays around with movie clichés and has fun breaking the genre down and putting his spin on things. We´ve seen other movies about movies before, but not like this one; it never gets generic. This is one funny and quirky dark comedy written with very sharp dialogues and unique characters. You can see some influence from Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese in McDonagh´s work, but it still remains fresh and breaks with generic clichés in a way that it remains unique. This is the second time Colin Farrell works with director McDonagh after In Bruges, and in my opinion these are his best roles. We can only hope these two continue to work together. McDonagh couldn’t have counted on a better ensemble cast than this one; everyone was terrific here.

This dark comedy is about a screenwriter named Marty (Colin Farrell) who is trying to write a screenplay titled Seven Psychopaths. The only problem is that he has only come up with one psychopath so far, and can´t get inspired to write the story. His good friend, Billy (Sam Rockwell), a frustrated actor who makes a living by kidnapping dogs and collecting the ransom, tells him about another psychopath and begins throwing ideas for the script. Billy´s associate in the dog kidnapping business is Hans (Christopher Walken) who is trying to make some extra money to help out his wife, Myra (Linda Bright Clay), who is in a clinic diagnosed with cancer. Billy and Hans end up kidnapping a shih tzu from a dangerous mob boss, Charlie (Woody Harrelson). They´ve messed with the wrong guy, because Charlie begins going all psycho on everyone in order to find his dog. Somehow Marty becomes entangled in this Los Angeles criminal underworld and in a way everyone seems to be pitching in ideas for his movie. The story begins taking some weird and unexpected turns everywhere as the action continues and some of Marty´s characters begin to come to life as not everyone seems to be who we expect.

This dark comedy has some wonderfully written dialogues with some great moments of humor, but at other times I felt the movie was drifting away by trying to break with generic barriers. It is still a fun movie and one I recommend thanks to an excellent and cleverly written script, and a brilliant ensemble cast. Farrell is always great working alongside McDonagh; Sam Rockwell gives another masterful and quirky performance, Woody Harrelson was made for these types of role, and Christopher Walken is just spectacular with his deadpan acting. It is not difficult to give good performances when you have such a great screenwriter creating some memorable and funny dialogues. I had a pleasant time with this film although my expectations were set much higher considering McDonagh´s previous film was much better. I was a huge fan of In Bruges, but Seven Psychopaths didn’t really surprise me as much.

  

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