Movie Reviews: Seven Psychopaths

Writer-director Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges (2008) was as much a commentary on the crime flick as it was a hugely enjoyable black comedy, and he repeats the trick, albeit on a bigger (and sunnier) canvas, with Seven Psychopaths (16s). Martin (Colin Farrell) is an LA-based Irish screenwriter suffering from writer’s block on his latest screenplay, a movie called Seven Psychopaths. Happily for Martin’s creative juices, his friends Billy (Sam Rockwell) and Hans (Christopher Walken) run a dog-napping scam, which thrusts Martin into LA’s criminal underworld when the pair kidnap a dog belonging to sociopathic crime boss Charlie (Woody Harrelson). A movie about making movies, and the morality of dabbling in fictional murder and mayhem for profit, Seven Psychopaths appears on the one hand to be something of self-conscious apologia from Martin McDonagh, and on the other to be a spoof of the crime flick that pokes fun at McDonagh himself for taking it all too seriously. The tension created by these apparently conflicting motives makes for a subversively funny meta-movie, not least because Rockwell, Harrelson and Walken buy into the premise with exaggeratedly ironic performances. Farrell, by contrast, struggles to strike a convincing note as the frustrated writer, and his deliberately shambolic turn grows increasingly irritating as Martin descends into whiny, bewildered petulance. Seven Psychopaths is a clever satire on violence in film, but it lacks the emotional heft of In Bruges.

Devastated when she discovers her new fiancée cheating on her, Nina (Leighton Meester) heads home for the first time in five years, only to fall for her next-door neighbour David (Hugh Laurie), who just so happens to be her best friend’s father. Pitched somewhere between a romantic comedy and suburban soap opera, The Oranges (15A) offers an intriguing twist on the conventions of the romance drama. Director Julian Farino broadens out the story to examine the consequences of their affair on both families, and the extent to which Nina and David’s pursuit of happiness forces everyone else to examine their own willingness to accept a life of mediocrity. It’s an ambitious ploy, although it does spread the story a little thin. Laurie and Meester turn in good performances but fail to strike a convincing chemistry. A bittersweet tale that entertains, The Oranges never fully engages the audience in Nina and David’s plight.