Martin McDonagh is a pretty damn talented filmmaker and screenwriter. His first full length feature film In Bruges had won critical acclaim around the world, snatched an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay and was a modest success at the box office. So can he repeat the trick with his follow up feature Seven Psychopaths?
The good news first: McDonagh didn't sell out. He stuck to his guns, trusted his writing and directing skills and has delivered a film that is just as unique as In Bruges was. It doesn't fit into any common Hollywood genre, is not populated by pretty faces but rather a ton of memorable character actors and the action on screen is never gratuitous but always serves a purpose. With that being said it's also has its shortcomings but I'll come back to those later.
Seven Psychopaths is about Colin Farrell playing Martin, a Hollywood screenwriter struggling to write a script for a movie called "Seven Psychopaths". He has a best friend named Billy, played by the always reliable Sam Rockwell. Billy is an unsuccessful actor but he's made a business out of dognapping with his buddy Hans, played by Christopher Walken in typical Christopher-Walken-mode. When Billy and Hans kidnap the dog of psychopathic crime boss Charlie, played by Woody Harrelson, things take a turn for the worse as Charlie starts a crazed violent crusade to get his beloved dog back.
What really works in the film are the dialogue and characters. Even with a studded cast like that everyone gets his moment to shine. Just like in In Bruges, Farrell as Martin proves himself to be a good choice for a rough-edged but eventually likable lead with the right amount of grit to it. Since his attempts at being the lead in Hollywood tentpole movies like Miami Vice, Alexander and Total Recall haven't exactly been fruitful, it's good to see him in reliably fine form in this smaller outing. Harrelson is on fine form as well, switching from downright disturbing to laugh-out-loud hilarious in an instant. Walken is Walken, that's really all you can say, the man is an institution in American cinema since the 70s, unique in his mannerisms and enjoyable to watch.
But the real standout performance comes from Sam Rockwell. Rockwell is one of those actors that you've seen popping up left and right for the past 20 years but who's still hasn't had his big break. His range is quite impressive; whether it's in trashy blockbusters like Charlie's Angels, glossy weepers like The Green Mile or incredibly-awesome-but-severly-underseen films like Moon or Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, he's always great to watch. Seven Psychopaths is no exception, Rockwell is given full reign of every scene he's in. His Billy is a strangely compelling creature, desperately trying to prove his friendship to Martin and helping him out with his screenplay. Bursting with twisted energy, he especially is obsessed with having a grand climactic shootout at the end of the script. When he is acting out how it is supposed to come together, it is not just a showcase for Rockwell's scene-stealing abilities but also for McDonagh to upend all typical Hollywood action cliches.
McDonagh proves himself again to be very capable of handling a good plot and great characters. Although his approach of making a movie about writing the movie that you are watching is not a novelty (Adaptation with Nicolas Cage pretty much perfected that concept), McDonagh as a writer puts his own little spin on it and makes it seem fresh and exciting. That's why it's so unfortunate that McDonagh the director occasionally fails to translate what works well on paper onto the big screen. Tonal inconsistencies are the biggest problem. You just have to take a look at his previous work In Bruges again. That film mixed dark humor with heavy drama and succeeded thanks to the gothic setting of Bruges and a quiet, very subdued tone. Seven Psychopaths tries to go for a similar mix of styles but sometimes falls into loud and wacky territory, and that really contradicts the dramatic moments in the film. Viewed just by itself, every moment works great but as a coherent whole the film is less than the sum of its pieces.
Nonetheless, Seven Psychopaths still entertains the living hell out of you, even if it never reaches the lofty highs it is reaching for.
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