Movie review: Seven Psychopaths | canada.com

To say writers are tortured souls hardly breaks stereotype. People who spend all day staring at a computer screen, conjuring words from the ether and forever weaving layers of fantasy and reality into written prose are people who live inside their own head.

For some, the landscape that lies above the neck can be a peaceful, idyllic place where fluffy lambs graze on perpetually green pastures. But for most writers, it?s a bloody battlefield where severed chunks of copy lie next to disembowelled works of genius ? and the white-eyed drill sergeant called self-esteem calls you worthless.

Marty (Colin Farrell) knows the deal. Marty was a big writer back in the day. He won prizes, had hot girlfiends and bought himself a nice house in Los Angeles. All he needed to do was write another hit, which is proving far more difficult than Marty could have imagined. Not even wine seems to be helping.

Fortunately for Marty, he?s got some very imaginative friends ? and before the first scene even ends, they?re throwing ideas in his direction.

The most helpful creative muse is Billy (Sam Rockwell), a fast-talking con artist who spends his days lying poolside with his model squeeze, or else helping Hans (Christopher Walken) kidnap dogs from the local park, and then claim the reward money.

They aren?t upstanding citizens, but for all their flaws, there?s something undeniably charming about each one of them, which immediately pulls us to the heaving chest of this ultra-violent black comedy.

Though Seven Psychopaths has been compared to Quentin Tarantino?s work for its cartoonish trail of blood and deadpan violence, director-writer Martin McDonagh is a whole lot smarter than Tarantino ? not on any smarmy, obnoxious way, but a dramatic one.

Where Tarantino relies on cinematic device to do a lot of the heavy lifting, with choreographed action sequences and well-timed gore, McDonagh lets his pen do all the work.

Seven Psychopaths is a very chatty movie, especially given its manly form. Every central character is male, and even McDonagh makes a note of it in the dialogue, as he gives Billy the role of self-conscious movie monitor.

Billy offers several asides to Marty over the course of the film, expanding on the lack of good roles for women, and the sexist component to moviemaking in general. It?s funny stuff because it?s all entirely accurate.

Moreover, the entire saga unfolds in the moist creases of Hollywood?s half-famous talent pool, where Michael Pitt and Harry Dean Stanton don?t mind being a day player for a decent payday.

Marty feels above the fray, but when Hans and Billy take the wrong dog hostage, any sense of superiority evaporates because the man who owns the dog is a gangster, and he?ll stop at nothing to be reunited with his shih tzu ? no matter how many must die.

Yep. It?s over-the-top, and it could be exhausting, but the story pulls us into the chop because the characters have so much dimension ? and so much to say.

Whether it?s a cameo from Tom Waits, who answers an ad for psychopaths and offers a story of Amish heartbreak, or Woody Harrelson cranking into high gear as the toy breed fanatic with a violent personality, the men in this movie seem baffled by their own behaviour.

There almost seems to be a hand of destiny pushing them down the road like so many Hot Wheels on a collision course. And really, that?s sort of what this movie feels like: A highly engineered and brightly coloured crash-up derby.

McDonagh lays out the orange tracks in every room in the house and sends each car flying out the bedroom window into a bucket of water below. Half the fun is just watching the action ? even when it makes very little sense, has no motivational credibility and feels somewhat amoral.

Rockwell and Walken bounce off Farrell?s tightly wound writer like pinballs off a flipper, crashing into the world outside, and lighting up dark corners of the playing surface with their bright, reflective, but impenetrable presence.

Throw Harrelson in there and it?s a great big ham sandwich.

Farrell actually has the most sedate role, but it?s also the most important because it provides the access door to this alternate reality. He provides the role of straight man in the human comedy ? and because he?s such a good actor he makes it look easy.

Not that performance is the first thing you?ll really appreciate in this unholy, and highly entertaining, mess. The familiar mix of blood and yuks will be the first thing you notice. It?s only when McDonagh takes it further than you dared expect that you start to notice the writing, and begin to see the delicate layers of dialogue and the tiny cogs in his machine.

Anything this violent and immoral shouldn?t be so much fun, and even McDonagh knows it ? which is no doubt why he went to such great lengths to torture his fame-starved, ego-needy screenwriter from start to finish as he searches to reclaim his lost puppy of soul.

Three and a half stars out of five

Source: http://o.canada.com/2012/10/12/eds-embargo-no-webtvprint-until-1800-et-on-thursday-oct-11-6/

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