Seven Psychopaths - Mediocre Meta

I had high expectations for this film, or more accurately stated "hopeful" expectations.

When Martin McDonagh's previous film "In Bruges" was released over four years ago, I thought the trailers made it look worthless, but following a cavalcade of super glowing reviews I ended up seeing it in the theatres and was blown away. The amazing acting and character-work of Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, the beautiful location of Bruges, and the wonderful lyrical script of the director-writer Martin McDonagh. Last year that experience repeated itself with the release of McDonagh's brother John Michael McDonagh's debut feature "The Guard". Unappealing trailer, great reviews, wonderful viewing experience with a great performance again by Brendan Gleeson. Because the McDonagh brothers' scripts have such great dialogue, interesting set-pieces, and twisting turning plots, it's had to bundle them up into a rock solid forty-five second trailer.

"Seven Psychopaths" started on the same path this year. The trailer was so bad I almost wanted to throw in the towel right there, but I knew this was a McDonagh film with one of the best casts I've ever seen. Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, Christopher Walken, and Woody Harrelson. That's a Four Horsemen of Awesomeness right there. And again this got great reviews, only just recently sliding below the ninety percent approval status at Rotten Tomatoes (it's stuck at eighty-four right now). Unfortunately, although I'm happy I saw it, I'm gonna have to hope brother John Michael's next film "Calvary" about Brendan Gleeson (who's missing from this film, BIG MISTAKE Martin McDonagh) as a priest beset upon by a sinful congregation brings the standard of the McDonagh's films back up to par.

It's almost impossible to describe the plot of this film. It's a bit of a mess, but totally followable. I just don't know how well I'll be able to convey it here. Basically it's a black comedy with a lot of meta, "Adaption" like qualities to it. The main character Martin (Colin Farrell) is a Hollywood screenwriter (with the same name as the writer-director of the actually film) working on a script called "Seven Psychopaths". The stories of these psychopaths are based off of people Martin's heard about from the newspaper and his actor friend Billy (Sam Rockwell). 

Billy and his older friend Hans (Christopher Walken) are also dog thieves who kidnap mutts to later claim the reward money given out by their thankful owners. However Billy steals the shih-tzu of a local gangster Charlie (Woody Harrelson) who happens to be obsessed with the dog which leads to Charlie killing various people connected to the main characters on his way to getting his dog back.

Along the way are comments on the cliches and current state of cinema, characters that blur the lines between the actual universe of this film and Martin's fictional screenplay, and a ton of non-plot related interesting scenes. I found that the more the film moved the plot along, the less exciting it was. The characters as a whole are unlikable. In "In Bruges" McDonagh created characters who did bad things, but were human and caused you to empathize with them. This time I ended up being entertained by the line readings Rockwell and Walken gave because their characters were just so wacky, but I couldn't relate to anyone. Now to be fair I think McDonagh is much more interested in blurring the lines of fact and fiction in the plot than writing another quiet character based film, but this just didn't grab me like the prior one did.

That said, there is a lot of interesting stuff nestled into the movie as a whole despite its flaws. I just feel that unlike "Adaptation" which exists as certain kind of movie for the first 2/3rds before changing into something excitingly different, "Seven Psychopaths" slowly starts to lose steam once McDonagh reveals his bag of tricks. It is worth watching as there is a lot I'm not really able to get into without spoiling everything, but just know that as a whole it's nothing compared to "In Bruges" or "The Guard".

Rating - 3 out of 5 stars

Random Thoughts -

Christopher Walken got laughs from the audience I saw it with just by appearing on screen for the first time. He actually gives an interesting "normal", but quirky performance, but all I could think about was how annoying it would be to have a conversation with him. I don't know if he talks like off-screen, and honestly it wouldn't be as annoying as talking to Gilbert Gottfried, but Walken's style of speech never really intrigued me like it has others. I'm just imaging sharing an apartment with him, coming home, asking him "How was your day?". He's like "The...toilet is clogged,...I called a...plumber he should...BE able...to come tomorROW...". I'd go mental.

The movie has this cool thing in the first half where it'll cut to the tales Farrell's including in his screenplay. We see an awesome short piece dealing with a Quaker psychopath (Harry Dean Stanton), a father who is taking revenge on the man who murdered his daughter many years before. Also Tom Waits stops by to tell a story after Billy posts an ad in LA Weekly looking for the stories of psychopaths for Martin to include in his script. There's a lot of twists and turns that come up later that bring these stories closer to the main plot, but I found these later surprises not that surprising or interesting and just felt the muddied up what was already a spiraling story. The short stories are reminiscent of Martin McDonagh's play "The Pillowman" which is required reading if you enjoy quality.

The location of this film is Los Angeles as opposed to Belgium or Ireland. This hurt my interest in it a little since I live in Los Angeles and it holds very little exotic curiosity toward me. The fun of "In Bruges" and "The Guard" were that they were not only fascinating stories, but also in a small way, travelogues.

Sam Rockwell has a lot of fun in this film. He's incredibly charismatic and you can just see the joy in his eyes as he get's to play this wild character. He's the center of one of the best scenes in the film. He, Farrell, and Walken are in the Joshua Tree desert hiding out from Harrelson's crew when Farrell decides to let Rockwell and Walken help him write his screenplay. Rockwell gives this monologue dealing with what he thinks the ending of the film should be which is just delightfully entertaining and which of course comes into play later as the lines between fiction and reality continue to blur. The movie is worth seeing just for this scene as well as the short stories I mentioned above.

The first scene in the movie is on the verge of greatness. Two recognizable actors (especially if you watch "Boardwalk Empire") who I don't want to spoil, cameo as hitmen who work for Harrelson's character. The philosophical hitmen genre has been trod upon many times, by writers such as Pinter and Martin McDonagh himself, but I still get a kick out of it. It's almost like a mini-play. These two mooks have a "Pulp Fiction"-like conversation at the Lake Hollywood Reservoir as they get ready to make a hit and the few minutes they're on screen mistakenly made me think I was in for another "In Bruges"-like experience.

Next - Argo on 10/15th.

This is long and rambling, but I'm still working out the kinks in my writing process. As I do more I should be able to get a decent style going, but for now bear with me and feel free to leave any comments on these pieces here.