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Benjamin Wood
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The dark comedy is a difficult genre to get right. Make it too dark, and it fails to be funny and even supposedly humorous moments are amazingly uncomfortable (The Weather Man), while if you make it too funny, the dark moments seem to undermine the humor and actually work against the movie (The Meaning of Life). Fortunately, In Bruges manages to balance the comedy and darkness in a way that's both shocking and enjoyable.

Ray (Colin Farrell) and Ken (Brendan Gleeson), two hitmen, have been banished to the medieval town of Bruges by their boss, Harry (Ralph Fiennes), after a hit gone wrong. Ken, armed with tour guides and a zest for something new, is willing to take the trip in stride. Ray, however, is immediately turned off by Bruges' lack of modern amenities, and spends most of his time complaining or making fun of the locals (as well as other tourists).

While a story about hitmen, or more specifically a botched assassination, is not new, the way in which In Bruges is presented is. Martin McDonagh, a theater writer known for his caustic sense of humor and no-holds-barred strategy at writing, infuses the dark story of In Bruges with ample doses of politically incorrect jokes. In the first ten minutes, Ray claims, "If I'd grown up on a farm and was retarded, Bruges might impress me, but I didn't, so it doesn't," and then proceeds in the next couple minutes to insult a group of overweight American tourists, claiming that they can't go on a tower tour because they won't fit up the stairs. Throughout the movie, jokes abound about fat people, "midgets," black people, gay people, people from Bruges, tourists, and just about anyone else that can possibly be thought of. In many circumstances, I would've just gotten up and walked out, but In Bruges manages to paint the crass nature of the jokes in contrast with the characters behind the jokes (mainly Ray and Harry), and tries to show that it is not necessarily maliciousness that creates these jokes, but rather an ignorance about things outside of their own experience.

The subject matter is not the only possibly controversial part of In Bruges. The profanity is plentiful (Ralph Fiennes' character, who only has a major part in the last third of the movie, probably says the word "fuck" over a hundred times), and the violence is fairly graphic in a couple parts of the movie. It's not the profanity of the crassness that ultimately retracts somewhat from the movie, but rather the way the story is put together. On their own, most of the movies' scenes are strong, but sometimes you just have to wonder "Why was that there?" Case in point is a prolonged scene revolving around Ray, Ken, a "dwarf" (don't you dare call him a "midget") named Jimmy, and a couple of prostitutes. Although the scene is funny and disturbing (Jimmy describes in cocaine-fueled detail a war that will soon happen between the "blacks" and the "whites"), but other than revealing the characters' general lack of inhibitions (and Ken's growing annoyance with Ray and the kind of people he hangs out with), the scene seems disconnected from the rest of the movie. The humor, at times, just seems tacked on to liven up otherwise slow sections of the story.

This decision to spice up some areas of the story is a shame, for the humor probably would've been more effective and, in the end, more shocking had it been used sparingly. As is, by the time you reach the amazingly dark ending, your mind has been on such a rollercoaster of humor and darkness that it's tough to fully comprehend whether the movie you've just seen is brilliant or utter shit. Unfortunately, In Bruges' inability to seamlessly integrate it's comedy and it's darkness ultimately means that it's rather somewhere in between.

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