Wednesday, October 24, 2012

"Seven Psychopaths" might be two or three too many.

I recently wrote that bad reviews were much more fun to write than good ones, but sitting here wondering what to say about Martin McDonagh’s Seven Psychopaths is making me feel that while writing bad reviews may be fun, writing so-so reviews is pretty dang difficult.  Throwing out a few sentences into a blank MS Word document, looking at them, rearranging them several times, and hoping some sort of coherent train of thought manifests itself as a result is the beginning of the process that (sometimes) leads to something I’m not ashamed to read back to myself, and then allow you, Dear Reader, to see.  The few sentences that get thrown onto the screen seem to come a bit faster, and contain a bit more wit, however, when I find myself on either end of the disgust/praise spectrum than they do when I’m somewhere in the apathetic middle.  Watching Colin Farrell play a writer struggling to get farther than his title of Seven Psychopaths makes me glad I don’t have to resort to some of the ends to which he must go for inspiration.

Farrell plays Marty, a screenwriter who has fixated himself on a title, “Seven Psychopaths,” and now strains his brain to flesh out a narrative from those two words.  His environment presents obstacles, as his girlfriend is a nag, badgering him about getting started and making headway on the screenplay, and his best friend Billy (Sam Rockwell) is apparently a slacker/loser, making an existence out of stealing dogs and then returning them to grateful owners for the reward money.   Oh, and it goes without saying that Marty, being Irish, and a writer to boot, drinks to excess, to the point he can’t remember his girlfriend kicking him out of the house the night before he awakens on a sofa at Billy’s place. 

On the sofa beside him is Billy’s latest “hostage,” a Shih Tzu that happens to be owned by Charlie (Woody Harrelson), a gangster of some sort who loves this furry little turd beyond comprehension and sets out on a murderous crusade to find it, one that leads to Billy’s co-hort Hans (Christopher Walken), and then to Marty.  During all of this, Billy has provided Marty some story fodder in the form of pointing out a newspaper story about a current serial killer who targets mob figures, and has even taken it upon himself to find some research opportunities for Marty by placing a newspaper ad for psychopaths to come and be interviewed, without Marty’s approval and against his better judgment and survival instincts. 

The plot weaves and jumps through Billy, Hans and Marty’s escaping Charlie’s goons, the interviewing of one of the psychopath want-ad respondents, and the visualizing of their brainstorming sessions for the screenplay – ideas that range from Vietnamese villagers and hookers in Vegas hotel rooms, to a mixed-race couple on murdering-of-murderers spree through 1960s-Civil-Rights-era America, to a current-day mass nighttime shootout in a Los Angeles graveyard.  They flee to Joshua Tree National Park in the California desert, have some deep philosophical discussions, and eventually have a showdown with Charlie to determine who gets to keep the Shih Tzu.  You know, just a quiet, introspective character study of a film... 

So was the whole thing a figment of Marty’s imagination, some sort of writer’s mental process that led to the screenplay he’s shown completing at the movie’s end?  I leave that for you to determine, but there’s probably no right or wrong answer to that question.  The opening scene of the movie is definitely one of Marty working on his story, and the tag sequence that interrupts the final credits is almost certainly a dream sequence, too, so one must wonder just how much of what happens in between is imaginary as well. 

Anyway, Farrell is pretty good here, as he usually is.  It seems he realizes that he's the center of sanity in this story, and the nutjobs around him are the entertainment, so his struggle to maintain a grasp on his less-stable companions sort of mirrors the audience's trying to keep up with what's actually happening to them and what's their vivid imaginations running wild. Rockwell has shown us he can "act out" with the best of them in such fare as Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the first Charlie's Angels flick (yes, I saw that - don't judge), and Walken is... well, he's Christopher Walken. Some people (although I'm not certain that I'm one of them) subscribe to the theory that Christopher Walken in anything can be entertaining, if nothing else than waiting to see if he'll demand more cowbell at any given moment.   

This movie was written and directed by Martin McDonagh, and I liked what I believe he was trying to do here, but the final product on screen seemed like he was trying a bit too hard, and I think parody/satire/alternate reality depends on an effortless-ness in order to succeed.  While not exactly the same genre, I enjoyed his In Bruges about four years ago a lot more than this.  Although I could sense his style in the characters and dialogue of Seven Psychopaths, I thought In Bruges was much funnier and don’t feel like it tried anywhere near as hard. 

I wouldn’t have minded paying for the tickets for this one, but fortunately, I didn’t have to (thank you, Regal Cinemas Crown Club rewards points!).  That said, if you’re a Colin Farrell fan, or even a Sam Rockwell fan, then you might find this enjoyable once it pops up on Cinemax a year from now (and this one definitely feels like Cinemax – not HBO…).  Maybe you’ll have an easier time of coming up with something witty to say about it afterwards than I did.

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