"IN BRUGES" (2008) Directed by Martin McDonagh #bruges #colinfarrell

"It’s been fifteen years since London born filmmaker Martin McDonagh released this, his debut feature length film, and fifteen years since I first watched this and didn’t completely appreciate it. The single reservation I had all those years ago still stands, in that it’s a film of two distinct halves and when Ralph Fiennes arrives amid a scattergun of swear words and a terrible Cockney accent, it rather throws me out of a film that up until that point I admire and love tremendously. A decade and a half later my admiration for this film has grown exponentially and perhaps with the passage of time I now better understand that Ralph Fiennes character is deliberately and thoroughly unlikeable, the horrible bad guy to our two gun toting anti-heroes, and on a re-watch recently I now place In Bruges far higher in the four genuine twisted masterpieces released by McDonagh to date.

With his second film and follow up Seven Psychopaths from 2012 scheduled for another of my in-famous re-watches soon, the main reason I finally revisited his debut film here was due in the main to my unabashed love I instantly had for last year’s Oscar nominated The Banshees of Inisherin. Whilst it failed to garner a single win from its nine (nine!) nominations I felt this unfair on the re-teaming of its central stars Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell, and the first time they collaborated together with director McDonagh since this film in 2008. I also wanted to re-watch and reappraise this film as I also have more than a soft spot for the acting talents of Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell, Oscar winners both in McDonagh’s third film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Seven Oscar nominations and two wins in 2018, this genuine masterpiece currently resides at 166th on the IMDB top 250 films of all time, with Trainspotting and The Bridge on the River Kwai for company".

The above is an extract from my spoiler free review of "In Bruges" that I originally penned and published to my Medium blog site on 1st April 2023 and the review can be read in full here:

https://medium.com/@stephenblackford561/in-bruges-2008-e59482a678b8

This film also forms part of my 7 volumes of "essential film reviews collection" that are currently only available in E-Book or Kindle form but, should you have a Kindle "Unlimited" package, you can read any and every one of the 7 volumes for free:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0C4HZSTTH?ref_=dbs_p_pwh_rwt_anx_b_lnk&storeType=ebooks

Four self-published books this year, two planned for 2024 so far and the seven volumes of film reviews above, if you are able, here are three further ways and means of supporting me:

https://www.patreon.com/TheBlackfordBookClub
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