Two films that made a splash – a year apart – at the Sundance Film Festival are released on DVD today. Playwright turned filmmaker Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges, the opening night film at Sundance this January, is a gleefully dark comedy thriller about a couple of assassins holed up in the medieval Belgian city of Bruges and isn’t for the faint-hearted or easily offended.
McDonagh clearly likes to shock. His 2001 play, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, dared to poke fun at Irish republican terrorism and, at one point, piled the stage with severed limbs. Watching it, you didn’t know whether to recoil in horror or hoot with laughter. (I did both.)
His first feature film as a director, In Bruges isn’t quite so grisly, but it’s just as provocative. Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson star as a pair of Irish hitmen who’ve been sent by their boss (Ralph Fiennes) to lie low in Bruges after a bungled job. As they await instructions, Gleeson’s Ken tours the city's cultural sites, while Farrell’s testy, guilt-stricken Ray experiences a series of surreal encounters during which he manages to be offensive about Bruges, Belgium, women, Americans, and even dwarves.
You get the sense, now and then, that McDonagh is taking a little too much relish in his character’s political incorrectness, but the writing is so scabrously funny that you’ll laugh despite your best intentions. The acting’s terrific, too, with Farrell and Gleeson (who appeared in McDonagh’s Oscar-winning short film, Six Shooter), in top form, as is Ralph Fiennes, playing defiantly against type as a foul-mouthed cockney crime lord.
After the pitch-black humour of In Bruges, Garth Jennings’ Son of Rambow couldn’t be more different. A surprise hit at last year’s Sundance Festival, it’s a charming coming-of-age comedy set in Hertfordshire in the early 1980s and follows the escapades of two schoolboys as they try to film their own version of Sylvester Stallone’s First Blood.
The pair make an unlikely duo. Bill Milner’s meek Will Proudfoot comes from a strict religious family (they’re Plymouth Brethren) who forbid him to watch any TV or films. Unsurprisingly, he’s entranced when surly school tearaway Lee Carter (Will Poulter) shows him a bootleg copy of Stallone's 1982 Rambo flick and agrees to act as stuntman in the home movie Lee plans to enter in the BBC’s young filmmakers’ competition, Screen Test.
The scenes in which the innocently gung-ho Will literally throws himself into a series of hair-raising stunts are a hoot, but the film goes beyond comic pratfalls to deliver a convincing portrayal of childhood imagination and the shifting power relations of teenage friendships. Jennings also hits some potent nostalgia buttons, and has mildly satirical fun with 1980s fashion and music, while reminding us of the alluring cool of French exchange students.
