Writer/director Martin McDonagh’s new film, “Seven Psychopaths”,
has everything a dude wants out of a movie. It’s awash in violence, booze, laughter,
dog thievery, and the titular madmen. Emphasis on the men. At
one point, the protagonist, Marty (Colin Farell), a busted Irish screenwriter,
is accused of only writing female characters so they can be killed off later.
That charge has been leveled at McDonagh a time or two. We’re talking a
testosterone-fueled, pseudo-road movie with a story that’s smart, quick-witted,
and self-referential. Pulling off stories within stories, films within the
film, the narrative is an endlessly inventive, looping spiral of dark humor,
blood, and earnest emotion.
While this sounds like it could turn into a messy mishmash of
gimmicks and ideas, McDonagh balances everything with a light touch and sharp
eye. There’s a constant rise and fall to these elements in the plot, while the
pace never falters for a beat. Graphic bursts of carnage are countered by
humor, and when the film is about to become too cheeky, he drops something
genuine and touching on you, just to keep things from getting predictable.
Farell’s Marty may be a lovable drunken Irish lout to all of
us, though lately he’s done way more drinking than writing, but his charms have
started to wear thin on his girlfriend (Abbie Cornish). His latest script has a
title, weirdly enough it’s “Seven Psychopaths” (the protagonist happens to have
the same name as the film’s writer, curious), but no actual script. His actor
buddy, Billy (Sam Rockwell), has his back, however. Rockwell is in full gleeful
wing-nut mode as the type of guy who gets into a fistfight with the director at
auditions, and who steals dogs on the side, returning them for reward money.
When Billy steals the wrong dog—it belongs to Charlie
Costello (Woody Harrelson), a brutal, pitiless gangster, who, in all the world,
only loves his Shih Tzu—they find themselves, along with Hans (Christopher
Walken), pursued by a psychotic thug. Hiding out in the desert, the trio takes
peyote and they collaborate on Marty’s script. And Walken tripping balls in
Joshua Tree, talking into a handheld tape recorder, while Marty drinks himself
into oblivion, and Billy plots their final, bloody, triumphant standoff, is one
of the best things you’ll see in a movie this year.
There’s a strange internal beauty, and a manic, lunatic
logic to McDonagh’s characters and narrative. At the core, the film is really
about stories and storytelling. Through the writing process, and the subsequent
scenes that come to life inside of “Seven Psychopaths” itself, you witness the
inner desires, neuroses, fears, and hopes of each of the primary characters. Stories
unfold around them, enveloping them, informed by, and informing, their
predicament.
Each tale, and each individual, is soaked in its own sense
of sadness and loss, but a pitch-black gallows humor, and the occasional
exploding head, keeps the proceedings from getting too weighty and grave. In
this the film is wildly successful. For a script this intricately layered and
thematically dense, the film never falters as it builds towards the only climax
that can satisfy all that the story demands.
In case you haven’t grasped it yet, the point to all of this
is that you should go see “Seven Psychopaths”. Despite the fact that I think it
is great, it’s been difficult to write about. At the basic level it’s a blast,
bitingly clever and inventive, and ludicrous in its violence. The friendship
between Marty, Billy, and Hans is heartfelt and genuine, and as absurd as the
premise is—seriously, Tom Waits as a bunny-cuddling serial killer killer?—it
somehow never rings false. A movie obsessed with itself—though one that never
comes across as pretentious our self-important, a credit to McDonagh and the
actors—it presents the problem of living life as if it were a movie, and the
misguided expectations and tragic disappointments of existing that way.\
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