In Bruges 2008

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: After playing one too many sullen poseurs it's clear Colin Farrell and Ralph Fiennes had a ball making an inky black comedy seething with grandiose invective. Read more

Carina Chocano, Los Angeles Times: In Bruges manages to toy with cliche while avoiding it entirely. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: This dark comedy shifts effortlessly between silly and sobering, and it finally gives Colin Farrell the chance to be as funny as we've long suspected he could be. Read more

Amy Nicholson, I.E. Weekly: A film that's so bloody wonderful (in both meanings of the word) that all other movies this year might as well go straight to video. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: A gruesome, confused stumblebum of a movie. Read more

Andrew Sarris, New York Observer: Not entertainment for the faint-hearted and mindlessly censorious, and in this particularly chaotic period, it seems right in tune with the times. It goes almost without saying that the acting of the three leads is, in a word, splendid. Read more

Mark Rahner, Seattle Times: A kind of eccentric, wisecracking Waiting for Godot that shifts gears into a bloody, unpredictable action spectacle that never loses its heart. Read more

Tasha Robinson, AV Club: When it's funny, it's hilarious; when it's serious, it's powerful; and either way, it's an endless pleasant surprise. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: The dialogue is front and center, in spite of the picturesque setting and all the goings-on, and it's the best thing about the film. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: What's a pair of Irish hitmen doing In Bruges? I.e., what are two colorful but hackneyed movie stereotypes doing in Belgium's most well-preserved medieval city? Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: The movie gradually deepens from odd-couple comedy into Catholic-themed drama, but it remains marvelously funny throughout. Read more

Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle: 'After I killed him, I dropped the gun in the Thames' -- so begins In Bruges, an insanely clever thug's tale so rife with obscenity that those 11 words form one of the longest complete sentences that can be repeated safely here. Read more

Tom Charity, CNN.com: For all his movie's tough talk, it's a sometimes slipshod construction. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: [Director McDonagh's] seesawing between slapstick and horror comes across as opportunistic because ultimately he cannot place the lives of these men in a credible moral context. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: A brutal and at times amusing excursion. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: It's hard to mix dark wit with real tragedy, but that's what writer-director Martin McDonagh pulls off with In Bruges, a wonderfully realized examination of unintended and deadly consequences. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: In Bruges lurches from pretty but uninformative tour-of-the-town footage to static conversations between Ray and Ken, dully framed. Read more

Ella Taylor, L.A. Weekly: All the proletarian poetry in the world can't save this movie from its blurry mess of mixed motives. Read more

Bruce Newman, San Jose Mercury News: It somehow manages to never stop being brutally funny, while also becoming tragically bleak. Read more

Jan Stuart, Newsday: Martin McDonagh's raucous dark comedy teeters between cheeky humor and violence, overplaying both to varying degrees. Read more

Anthony Lane, New Yorker: No one wants a movie that tiptoes in step with political correctness, yet the willful opposite can be equally noxious. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: It's obvious why [director] McDonagh wanted to launch his film career with bang-bang instead of talk-talk. But his timing seems off. Read more

Bob Mondello, NPR.org: It plays really engagingly, with the leads doing a wonderful Mutt and Jeff act and the camera lingering lovingly over scenery that looks awfully pretty in the moments before it gets spattered with blood. Read more

Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: There are good moments laced through the severely uneven In Bruges, but the best reason for seeing it is Bruges itself. Read more

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: Disappointingly strip-mines the very fatigued comic hit-man genre to diminishing returns. Read more

Manohla Dargis, New York Times: [McDonagh] talks a blue streak beautifully, but he has yet to find the nuance and poetry that make his red images signify with commensurate sizzle and pop. Read more

Christy Lemire, Associated Press: In Bruges is a wildly imperfect feature debut, but it does make you curious to see what else McDonagh has to offer. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: In the end, In Bruges is a bit arch and artificial, but it is more than redeemed by Farrell and Gleeson's presence, and by the bushwhacking wit of the film's writer/director. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Once the shooting starts, everything collapses, and the ending is the kind that causes head-shaking. It's as if the filmmaker realized he wrote himself into a corner and had to resort to a contrivance to bring things to a close. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: This film debut by the theater writer and director Martin McDonagh is an endlessly surprising, very dark, human comedy, with a plot that cannot be foreseen but only relished. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: In Bruges is a haunting and hypnotic movie, just the thing to get lost in. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: It's definitely not to everyone's taste, but the most interesting pictures never are. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: In Bruges is not a great movie, but there's no mistaking that it's the product of a great talent. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: Overplotted, choppy, and contrived, it nonetheless has a curious vitality that makes you wonder where McDonagh will go next. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: If you could hoist a film on your shoulders and parade it through the theater for adulation and hoorays, the new British crime comedy In Bruges would be the one. Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: It feels contrived -- often clever and sometimes funny but always self-conscious, one of those indie flicks where the damn quirkiness is plastered on and right in your face. It's like an architect making the gargoyles the centrepiece of his church. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: A rude and riotous laugher. Read more

Wally Hammond, Time Out: Its mock-artistic thriller trappings notwithstanding, 'In Bruges' is basically a funny, tragicomic two-hander, with the casting of Farrell alongside Gleeson enabling a pleasing Irish inflection. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: It is easily one of the best debut feature films in recent memory. The notion of a pair of hit men cooling their heels as they're forced to play tourist in a picture-postcard town is clever enough. But as the story unspools, it grows more intriguing. Read more

Robert Koehler, Variety: This half-comic, half-serious account of two Irish hitmen who are sent to the titular Belgian burg to cool their heels after a job is moderately fair as a nutty character study, but overly far-fetched once the action kicks in. Read more

John Anderson, Washington Post: Those who know McDonagh's work know a vein of darkness will run deeply through the comedy. It has seldom been darker. Or funnier. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: I never expected to be moved by In Bruges, but I was. Read more