Seven Psychopaths (2012)
Country: GB
Technical: col/2.35:1 110m
Director: Martin McDonagh
Cast: Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, Christopher Walken, Woody Harrelson, Abbie Cornish, Olga Kurylenko
Synopsis:
A Hollywood screenwriter with writer's block is drawn into the 'dognapping' antics of his sociopathic actor friend when the latter inadvertently lifts the shih tzu of an organized crime lord, and gradually the seven psychopaths of his putative screenplay take physical shape in his life.
Review:
The old device of having a literary work within the film take shape in tandem with the film itself (cf. Blier's Notre histoire) is here resurrected for McDonagh's eagerly anticipated follow-up to In Bruges, whose title alone is redolent of how much more it promises than it delivers. The cinematography of Ben Davis makes the environs of L.A. and the Sonora desert positively gleam, and, yes, there are shafts of the writer-director's boldly misanthropic humour, particularly as mingled with religious matters, but the film rapidly loses its way amid a welter of affectless violence, just as when an intriguing premise is developed by the fevered imaginations of a group of unstable blokes around a campfire. Wait a minute...
Country: GB
Technical: col/2.35:1 110m
Director: Martin McDonagh
Cast: Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, Christopher Walken, Woody Harrelson, Abbie Cornish, Olga Kurylenko
Synopsis:
A Hollywood screenwriter with writer's block is drawn into the 'dognapping' antics of his sociopathic actor friend when the latter inadvertently lifts the shih tzu of an organized crime lord, and gradually the seven psychopaths of his putative screenplay take physical shape in his life.
Review:
The old device of having a literary work within the film take shape in tandem with the film itself (cf. Blier's Notre histoire) is here resurrected for McDonagh's eagerly anticipated follow-up to In Bruges, whose title alone is redolent of how much more it promises than it delivers. The cinematography of Ben Davis makes the environs of L.A. and the Sonora desert positively gleam, and, yes, there are shafts of the writer-director's boldly misanthropic humour, particularly as mingled with religious matters, but the film rapidly loses its way amid a welter of affectless violence, just as when an intriguing premise is developed by the fevered imaginations of a group of unstable blokes around a campfire. Wait a minute...
Country: GB
Technical: col/2.35:1 110m
Director: Martin McDonagh
Cast: Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, Christopher Walken, Woody Harrelson, Abbie Cornish, Olga Kurylenko
Synopsis:
A Hollywood screenwriter with writer's block is drawn into the 'dognapping' antics of his sociopathic actor friend when the latter inadvertently lifts the shih tzu of an organized crime lord, and gradually the seven psychopaths of his putative screenplay take physical shape in his life.
Review:
The old device of having a literary work within the film take shape in tandem with the film itself (cf. Blier's Notre histoire) is here resurrected for McDonagh's eagerly anticipated follow-up to In Bruges, whose title alone is redolent of how much more it promises than it delivers. The cinematography of Ben Davis makes the environs of L.A. and the Sonora desert positively gleam, and, yes, there are shafts of the writer-director's boldly misanthropic humour, particularly as mingled with religious matters, but the film rapidly loses its way amid a welter of affectless violence, just as when an intriguing premise is developed by the fevered imaginations of a group of unstable blokes around a campfire. Wait a minute...