In Bruges 4K 2008 Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

After assassins Ray and Ken screw up an important assignment in London, their evil boss Harry orders them to go to Bruges and keep their heads down. Once in the old Belgian town, Ray has nothing to do but flirt with a local hottie while Ken enjoys life and an unexpected vacation. Nothing seems to portend trouble in the quiet town...

Review 4K Movie

Bruges is a small Belgian town; one of those that can all fit in your pocket. It is there that two exiled assassins, exiled by their London boss, wander aimlessly through churches and sit on a bench - with their coat collars up - in mirthless contemplation in the absence of other entertainment.

One of them is seriously screwed up (just perfect Farrell), and the other was forced to go along with him (chunky Gleason), seemingly just to unwind, but in fact he had a dirty job ahead of him. Both, tormented by remorse, try, without much hope of success, to find common ground and start afresh, but at some point in their endeavors, an over-zealous idealistic killer with a ruthless view of morality (Freaky Fiennes) shows up and everything in idealistic Bruges immediately changes. The wind will pick up noticeably, the streets will seem deserted, and the mercenary guns will "talk" almost until dawn.

This feature debut by the talented but largely unknown in wide circles British director Martin McDonagh may, at first glance, seem uneven, too contrived, rather silly in the beginning and unnecessarily tragic towards the end. I guess by some sum of the parts it does, that is, the result is partly true, but damn it, I walked out of the theater - God forbid I should lie - with my hands shaking. The last time it was this jarring, squeezy and out of control was somewhere in the mid-90s, at the first viewing of Reservoir Dogs, which also left me feeling one-dimensional, but it didn't matter at all.

The California video rental shop blabbermouth should definitely be thanked for the fact that we are now living in the same era as the neo-innovators who make and edit films the way they want. However, of Tarantino's many followers, only McDonagh figured out that the most important thing in Q films was not the drive or the blood, but that you could always cry at them.

In fact, In Brugges, with its fucking dialogues and badass characters, oddly enough, wants less to be another Tarantino imitation and even less to be a farcical crime spoof, more to be Edgart Wright territory, a genre of black-black parody. That said, in Hot Fuzz it was all too obvious that everything was fake and the director was just playing with the form, leaving a minimum of bodies even after the final large-scale shootout. "Bruges" is the exact opposite in this regard: here, even blanks are blown out of their eyes.

The first half-hour is reserved for a defiantly nerdy touristy polemic, with Brandon Gleeson's character patiently coaxing the infantile Farrell to climb on the roof, and the latter roughly answering him: "why?" - "it's a great view" - "of what?" - "everything below" - "look, I'm down here already, I can see everything all right." Then at some point there's an amphetamine dwarf racist, cocaine lanes, prostitutes from Amsterdam - all making noise and stomping their feet; extremely delirious, but a lot of fun.

Toward the end, however, when they pull out the guns and rhyme shots with principles, there is no more room for sneering in the film. McDonagh, as a theatrical playwright, is well aware of why people are so addicted to their favorite theater and movies--to getting shock, happiness and catharsis just before they die.
That is why he transforms his pointless graphomaniacal shooter into a piercing drama of a rather existential nature overnight by means of some mechanisms.

And here it becomes abundantly clear that Bruges is not so much a provincial European town, which may or may not be liked at all, as a state of mind, a certain abstract place in a vast world, which is in everyone's heart. I don't know what kind of silly feeling this is, but the first thing that comes to mind afterwards is a wild desire to go to Belgium. To live there for a little while, to sleep there, to get up in the morning with tears and throw down a couple of ringing quarters from the highest bell tower.