Director: Martin McDonagh
Running time: 106 minutes
***
BOTCHED (15)Director: Kit Ryan
Running time: 91 minutes
**
IF HEAVEN, as Belinda Carlis
le observed, is a place on Earth, what is hell? According to playwright Martin McDonagh, it is a medieval town in Belgium.
Bruges (which comes with a pronunciation guide in the film's publicity material: "broozh", apparently) is where hitmen Ken (Brendan Gleeson) and Ray (Colin Farrell) are sent to lie low after Ray accidentally shoots a small boy dead on his first job. Their only instruction from their boss Harry (Ralph Fiennes) is to await further instruction.
Ken takes this better than Ray, and becomes an enlightened tourist, reading aloud from the guidebook about the history and architecture of the town. "Do you think this is good?" Ray retorts. "Going round in a boat, looking at stuff?" He is equally dismissive about the historic charms of the place. History, he notes, is "all just a bunch of stuff that's already happened".
Ken and Ray are a double act, almost married, but certainly trapped. They are waiting for Harry. Their Irishness suggests a link to the writing of Beckett, but they're more like Laurel and Hardy rewritten by Roddy Doyle and reinterpreted by Quentin Tarantino. This means they talk a lot and find themselves in absurd situations. They get to swear poetically and engage in comedy violence. They meet grotesques. Notably, Ray encounters a beautiful drug runner for a film production company, and a little person with a ketamine habit. Absurdity piles onto absurdity. Ken, a weary pudding of a man, takes stock: "Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf. I think I'm heading home."
Technically, these two lost souls are in purgatory and, behind the dwarf jokes, McDonagh may be trying to say something about the human condition. Or he may just be having a laugh. It works, just about, as knockabout fun, though Ben Kingsley's alcoholic hitman in You Kill Me deserved more bucks for his bang.
Botched is a caper about a jewel heist in Russia in which the hapless crooks, led by Ritchie (Stephen Dorff) find themselves trapped on the mysterious 13th floor of an apartment block, where they are tortured and tormented by the insane descendents of Ivan the Terrible.
The reputation of Ivan has suffered, according to some historians, because of a mistranslation – he wasn't much more terrible than your typical Russian despot – but director Kit Ryan isn't much concerned with that. His film inhabits the uncertain territory between parody and horror, and Dorff is to be commended for managing to keep a straight face, despite the comedy Russian accents affected by the rest of the cast, most notably Jamie Foreman (as a panto villain) and Geoff Bell as a useless security guard.
The film is relentlessly puerile, but Jaime Murray escapes with her reputation more or less intact. The twin-torturers Bronagh Gallagher and Edward Baker Duly may wish to have a quiet chat with their agents.
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In Bruges is on general release from Friday; Botched is on selected release from Friday
