Sundance Opening Night: In Bruges

Yesterday I said the opening night film at Sundance would be a comedy, but In Bruges is actually a bit moodier than that. It’s fiercly funny—not something I expected to say about Colin Farrell and Ralph Fiennes—and even though it’s a shoot-em-up hitman movie, its beautiful footage is edited with a patient, energetic sense of comic timing, which seems increasingly rare for a genre whose typical shot has the length of a Dorito.

The plot is also twisty enough that I wasn’t totally sure where it was headed, especially since writer-director Martin McDonagh has actually given the characters inner lives filled with doubt and leads them to a surprisingly touching finale. Two hitmen are supposed to be laying low in Bruges, Belgium, after a successful mission, but when they end up blowing off a few more heads—thanks to an overstimulated sense of justice—these cobblestone streets don’t seem too far away from the Fleet Street barber shop where Sweeney Todd slit a thousand throats, exacting his own brand of misguided vengeance.

Still, I’m not sure the characters’ healthy misgivings excuse their dialogue. Colin and Ralph are potty-mouths, for sure, but charged insults—like “little 10-year-old black boy”—pop up with odd regularity amid the sea of fucks, wedged into conversations like ill-advised punch lines instead of character development.

What sort of tone does the film set for this year’s festival? Beats me. It’s time to let our hair down. It’s time to laugh again. And shoot some people, feel kinda bad about it, and hurl some racial epithets. It’s that kind of year.