Like his previous film,
In Bruges, for pure entertainment and
endless quotability, Martin McDonagh’s Seven
Psychopaths is one of the films of the year. Blending the stylistic violence
of Tarantino, the genre deconstruction tropes of the likes of Scream and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang as well as the crackling, hilarious dialogue
that has become his trademark, McDonagh has returned after four years with a
gangster dramedy that skewers the films upon which it was based even as it
leaves most of them (let’s not carried away, this is no Pulp Fiction) trailing in its wake.
Colin Farrell arguably
hasn’t given a memorable screen performance since starring in In Bruges, and in his reunion with McDonagh
here he plays things relatively low-key, allowing showier performances from the
likes of Christopher Walken, Sam Rockwell and Woody Harrelson take the
limelight. Farrell plays Marty, a struggling, alcoholic screenwriter who wants
to write a screenplay called “Seven Psychopaths” but hasn’t got any further
than the title. His best friend, Billy (Rockwell), in a bid to help him out,
places an ad in the newspaper asking for psychopaths to contact him for
research purposes, while Billy’s dognapping business partner Hans (Walken)
misguidedly steals Bonnie, a Shih Tzu belonging to unhinged gangster Charlie
Costello (Harrelson). Walken, playing that soft, calm intensity he’s been doing
his whole career, gives his best performance in years, and is the perfect foil
for Rockwell, who has the manic energy and haywire unpredictability to convince
the audience that his character might turn out to be the biggest psychopath of
them all. Harrelson, too, while often playing for laughs via his baby-voice
relationship with Bonnie, delivers chills during an exchange with Han’s wife,
Myra, in her hospital room.
The film winds its way
back and forth between the Bonnie Situation and Marty’s screenplay and writer’s
block problems, taking detours by way of (among other scenes) Tom Waits’s
psychopath Zachariah, who answers Billy’s advert to relate a tale of travelling
the country killing serial killers and an extended imaginary sequence where
Billy lays out his ultra-violent conclusion for Marty’s screenplay, noting that
audiences will accept you killing anyone you want in a film, but woe betide you
if a cute rabbit happens to catch a bullet. In this way, elements of meta also
find their way into the narrative – it is surely no coincidence, for example,
that the main character is an Irish writer called Martin working in Hollywood –
but for all its attempts to pull you out of the film and examine it critically,
it’s far too enjoyable for you to do anything but sit back and wonder how
McDonagh has managed to weave so much into such a seamless screenplay, which
should be a shoe-in for a Best Original Screenplay Oscar nomination.
Violent, often
side-splittingly funny, thought-provoking and even emotional at certain points,
Seven Psychopaths is more than a
worthy follow-up to In Bruges, confirming
McDonagh as one of the most original writers and directors working in Hollywood
today. One can only hope that we don’t have to wait four years for his next
film to make an appearance.
4.5/5
