What a… strange… movie!

Yes, it’s funny – most of the audience was laughing out loud at some of the situations, myself included at the beginning. Although I confess, some of the anti-pc stuff was a bit too close to just generally rude as the film went on. Still, at least it’s rude across the board: homosexuality, dwarfism, race and religion all get at least a bit of a prodding. And fat people (excellent scene!). And if none of that offends you, there is a LOT of swearing.

However, the bulk of the film is actually quite dark. After a hit goes wrong, the two hitmen involved go on the run to Bruges (“I don’t even know where f’ing Bruges is” says Colin Farrell in the opening voice over. Long pause: “It’s in Belgium”.) Eventually we get a flashback to the crime (and pay attention: there’s a passing comment a while later that explains the why of it), and a lot of lingering shots of the pain showing on Colin Farrell’s face. It’s actually a pretty good topic, but it does take a while to explain enough not to feel a tad slow.

Overall I did enjoy this: there’s just something surreal and dark and done with a great deal of humour underneath it all. Still, I’m surprised at the solid ‘worth consuming’ here, and an 8 rating on imdb – I can easily see people could be bored with this, or not accept that it’s not all belly laughs.