Review of Seven Psychopaths (2012) by Andrew D — 26 Jun 2013

This may be labeled as a dark comedy, but I think that I missed the joke. Seven Psychopaths follows a man who's working on his new screenplay called Seven Psychopaths, but he's having a hard time figuring out how to write the story.

When his friend Billy offers to help him by getting real life psychopaths to tell their stories for inspiration, he gets caught up in a serious crime that involves the kidnapping of a Shih-Tzu and its crazy owner.

I had heard many great things about this film and I was so excited to finally see it the moment I hit the play button. When the credits began to roll, I was feeling quite disappointed. Now, the acting was pretty well done.

Each person did their part well, especially Woody Harrelson who played his role brilliantly. Where I felt disappointed in the film was the script. Most of the plot felt disjointed and choppily edited, which made the whole thing seem confusing to me.

The story did start to pick up near the close of the second act, but that still wasn't enough to make up for an hour's worth of time that felt kind of confusing. The dialogue in this film was also pretty weak.

I've been hearing that that's where the dark comedy lies, but I just didn't get what made the critics chuckle. The only time that I really laughed during the film was somewhere in the second act when he describes to Marty and Hans his idea of the perfect shootout.

It was deliciously campy and hysterical. Other than that, I just didn't find the film very funny. In the end, Seven Psychopaths is brilliantly acted throughout. Unfortunately, the script isn't well written and the "comedy" is virtually non-existent.

This has possibly been the most overrated film I've seen since Avatar in 2009.