Seven Psychopaths (2012)

Film: Seven Psychopaths (2012)
Stars: Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, Christopher Walken, Woody Harrelson, Abbie Cornish, Tom Waits
Director: Martin McDonagh
Oscar History: None
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

For those who missed it four years ago, In Bruges was a comic gem of the highest order-one of those films you laugh the entire way through, and suddenly realize you're watching every single year, even if it didn't make your Top 5 for the year.  Martin McDonagh, who wrote and directed both films, clearly has seen the films of Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie, but his films are a bit more retrospective, more character-piece than style exhibition.  Seven Psychopaths is a sometimes slightly confusing meta-adventure, but it will have you constantly proclaiming "ohhhhh!" and laughing, sometimes at wonderfully inappropriate times.

The film tells the tale of a talented writer struggling with writer's block and alcoholism (Farrell, playing a character named Marty, and one has to wonder how many similarities McDonagh included about himself here).  Farrell, an actor who showed immense range in In Bruges and Tigerland, despite his otherwise checkered filmography, plays the role rather well-Farrell is great at comedy, and is a fabulous straight man in the movie.  The slowly turning salt-and-pepper hair and the leaner frame for Farrell works for one of the sexiest men in filmdom, and while he's not quite at the (in my opinion, Oscar-worthy) level he was in In Bruges, this is easily the best thing he's done since that film.  Farrell is surrounded by a constantly peeved girlfriend (Cornish, in a thankless role) and his loser best friend Billy (Rockwell, who gets a lot of legroom here and fits right into McDonagh's world).  Billy, along with his friend Han (Walken), are petty dog-kidnappers (kidnapping dogs and then collecting the reward money) and they eventually kidnap Charlie's (Harrelson) dog, whom he is unnaturally attached to and is willing to murder his way back toward.

The film counts down a number of psychopaths, and at this point I should include the spoiler alert, as it's worth noting that the seven psychopaths slowly come together from their disconnected beginnings.  I'm not going to count down all of them, though I will say that the first one, the Jack of Diamonds killer, gets one of the most fascinating introductions of the seven when, in the opening scenes, we're treated to a Boardwalk Empire reunion with Michael Pitt and Michael Stuhlberg, seemingly too big of character actors to get iced so soon into the film, both getting shot in the heads by a killer to be revealed later.  The film has a lot of fun with cameos throughout the movie-later in the film, we're given some wonderfully cast work by an hilarious Gabourey Sidibe (can someone write her another script as good as Precious, pretty please?) and some silent glares from veteran character actor Harry Dean Stanton.

The movie continues on, giving us plenty of backstory on the characters, and a lot of the story is told by a meandering narrative, as the movie is both the actual story and the story that Farrell is writing in his head.  Several of the psychopaths (well, in the end we learn, one of the psychopaths) are fictional, and so we see their backstories and it is a confusing meta-game of whether the characters are leading their own destinies through the script or the script is leading them to their next plot point.  When Farrell's Marty says that they are just going to stay in the desert and talk in the movie he's writing, the three main characters stay in the desert until someone decides otherwise.

The acting is top notch across the board (though the comment about Marty not writing strong parts for women is true of McDonagh himself, Linda Bright Clay's great final scene being the exception).  Farrell, Harrelson (good, but not the brilliance that Ralph Fiennes reached in McDonagh's other film), and Rockwell (whom I'm not always a fan of) all toe the fine line between realistic and crazy so well that you never feel like any of them are chewing the scenery.  The best performances, though, belong to Waits and Walken.  Neither actor is particularly averse to playing a nut job, but both give a great sincerity to their characters and show a worn quality that I admired.  Neither actor is a young man, and their characters have lived long enough to not be off-put by their own idiosyncrasies and personal tics.  Make sure and stick around for after the credits to see one of these two men get some fun last jokes.

All-in-all, I'm a fan, and recommending it to anyone who can still catch it before it leaves theaters.  I'd say it plays just as well on DVD, which it does, but going to a theater would help improve the box office and we all want more movies like this, so shell out the $10 and hit the local AMC.  And for those of you who saw it-what'd you think?  Who was your favorite psychopath?  Are you also a fan of Colin Farrell's new hair?  And what do you hope McDonagh does next?