Review of Seven Psychopaths (2012) by Stevenf — 01 Nov 2013

Inspiration needs to come from somewhere, this is the sort of film that we know witty yet simple in many forms, with ‘Seven Psychopaths’, we have a film within a film, sort of. A lot of it is through the vivid imagination of Marty Faranan (Colin Farrell), while the rest is true to the main plot of the film, the title comes from the screenplay that screenwriter Marty is struggling to write, he has the title at the top of the page, the same as the real film, but not much else. He ends up getting quite a bit more than he bargained for when is loose cannon of a friend, Billy (Sam Rockwell), decides to put an ad in the paper reaching out for actual psychopaths, its dry and believable approach can only come from the man behind ‘In Bruges’ and ‘The Guard’, Martin McDonagh makes films that are soaked in their own awareness and deep characters. We immediately see this in the opening scene involving two hit men clearly waiting on their target, oblivious to the man in a red mask approaching them from behind, and in turn execute them, moments like this sum up the layers of surprise and edginess of the film, yet also not taking itself seriously. In the midst of Marty writing about psychopaths, or trying to, there is a serial killer on the streets of Los Angeles, the same man we meet at the beginning, his calling card being the Jack of Diamonds, he seems like a vigilante. Billy, meanwhile, spends his days kidnapping the dogs of rich people and collecting the reward with the help of Hans (Christopher Walken). He has his own past and own problems with his wife recovering from cancer, but caught in the middle of the wrong dog to kidnap, the one of gangster Charlie Costello (Woody Harrelson). We are introduced to each psychopath as their stories are revealed, the stories being played out as imaginary or as flashbacks, many being subtle bows to previous Hollywood films that employ the same scenarios, some of the quips seem to poke fun at themselves, but it also brings out quite an interesting and even heartwarming story, Walken in particular bringing a subtle yet effective tone to his role, some of this seems improvised, which is definitely a good thing.

The scenes with the three leads of Farrell, Rockwell and Walken, seamlessly combine silliness with brilliance as they attempt to come up with the ending for the film, but each time the film seems to go one way, it definitely can go other to surprise us, it has comedy, cruelty and camaraderie rolled into one well scripted package, which makes for a film that has the brass and talent to back itself up.