‘In Bruges’ is unbearably unpleasant

Ray (Colin Farrell) and Ken (Brendan Gleeson) are hitmen, and it’s best we just get that out of the way as soon as possible. They’re stuck in the sleepy hamlet of Bruges, Belgium for two weeks; Ken takes the opportunity to indulge in his interest in history, and Ray is simply bored out of his mind.

Along the way, they run into a film set, where they encounter a racist dwarf actor (Jordan Prentice), and the town’s resident drug dealer (the hypnotically beautiful Clémence Poésy). Can these elements add up to a successful comedy?

Most of “In Bruges”’ humor derives directly from Ray’s misanthropy. “If I’d grown up on a farm, and was retarded, Bruges might impress me,” he bemoans, “but I didn’t, so it doesn’t.” And it’s a genuinely funny moment. But there’s something distinctly less funny about Ray’s attempts to demonstrate why the targets of his sarcastic ire are worth condemnation. It’s one thing to make a well-timed fat joke, but where’s the humor in watching the fat guy in question chase after Ray until he (very quickly) runs out of breath? The joke no longer rests on Ray’s dim view of the world but merely on the fact that the film agrees with him—everyone is perfectly justified to toss out midget and retard jokes because they all deserve it. Pretty soon it becomes apparent that Ray’s metaphors involving such gems as “a fat retarded black girl on a seesaw” have little function beyond simple shock value. Whatever, man.

It turns out that Ray and Ken are in Bruges to work off the heat from a hit in which Ray accidentally shot a little boy in the head. There’s a reason, of course, why the film waits for a half-hour or so before revealing this bombshell: because it would have cast a deadly pall over the rest of the film. But, as it turns out, placing it a little farther into the film’s running time only completely destroys everything from that moment on. (It’s like that moment in “Planet Terror” when a kid of similar age accidentally puts a bullet in his own brain—it’s the precise moment when you start to wonder what the joke is supposed to be.) I believe Colin Farrell to be a profoundly underrated actor, and he brings a great deal of pathos to the situation—but there’s only so much that you can do with the material at hand, uncomfortably juggling between misguided drama and blisteringly unfunny comedy. There’s a moment late in the film in which Ken watches Orson Welles’ “Touch of Evil”—a moment, I suspect, that not only means to pay homage to that film’s long opening shot but also hopes that the invocation of a notoriously trashy B-movie will justify its own indulgences in less-than-savory material. But Welles was fully aware of his film’s perversities (as well as his own), allowing his own “touch of evil” to leak through every frame and complete the impression of sleaze. Too often does “In Bruges” feel like a rambling treatise on how shitty the world is, feeling too superior and self-absorbed to consider itself a part of that equation. “Everybody sucks but me,” in other words.

Luckily, Ralph Fiennes rescues the picture in its third act as Harry Waters, the hitmen’s employer, and he brings with him a self-deprecating charm that handily brings the humor back to where it belongs—on the hateful, murderous jackasses who have ridiculously bloated opinions of themselves. (There’s a huge laugh to be found as Harry awkwardly apologizes to his wife: “I’m sorry I called you an inanimate object.” You have to see it in context.) The drama responds in kind, bringing up oddly thoughtful ideas about knee-jerk principles as Harry stampedes his way through Bruges. If you can get through the first two-thirds of a 107-minute running time, then you’ll find yourself confronted with a powerhouse performance from an actor who manages to mold his presence into a self-contained morality play. Fascinating stuff, but just so you know, that’s a pretty hefty caveat.