In Bruges (UK, 2008)
Directed by Martin McDonagh
Starring Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes, Clemence Poesy

There have been a number of British gangster films in the last ten years which have re-approached well-worn crime thriller stories through distinctive dialogue, full-on violence and black humour. At its height this wave produced Gangster No. 1 and Sexy Beast, featuring barnstorming central performances by Malcolm McDowell and Ben Kingsley as near-mythical incarnations of evil. And while In Bruges never quite matches up to either of these, there is plenty in the way of humour and invention to render it thoroughly enjoyable.In Bruges is the debut film of playwright Martin McDonagh, most famous for his Leenane trilogy of plays - The Beauty Queen of Leenane, A Skull in Connemara and The Lonesome West. All three plays revolve around brutal acts of murder in which the death in question has left deep emotional scars on the perpetrators: in the case of The Lonesome West, it has caused the two brothers to divide the house precisely in two, with each brother owning what is on one side of a line.What connects all McDonagh's work is a rich streak of black, absurdist humour, which walks the same tightrope as Samuel Beckett or in some cases Spike Milligan between the utterly ridiculous and the drolly melancholic. The extremities of the characters in In Bruges are not simply a ploy on McDonagh's part to make a stock plot seem distinctive. They are there to deepen the archetypes and bring out more deeper, existential elements in the story and the characters, using banality to introduce depth.In Bruges begins with the same old story of a hitman (or hitmen in this case) hiding out in a foreign town after completing a job. Both men are faced with the prospect of being there for an undetermined amount of time, with nothing to do except spend their money and wait for instructions. Ken (Brendan Gleeson), the elder of the two, wants to take in the sights and wait patiently to move on, while Ray (an on-form Colin Farrell) is content to confine his sight-seeing to the bottoms of beer glasses.As with The American, Anton Corbijn's recent genre exercise, the characters in In Bruges carry guilt from a past mistake - in this case the death of a child during the assassination of a Catholic priest. Whole sections of the film tip their hat knowingly to Don't Look Now - so knowingly that Clemence Poesy feels the need to mention it on the set of the film-within-a-film. Just as Donald Sutherland keeps seeing images of a girl in red around Venice, and becomes convinced that he is seeing his daughter, so Ray's encounters with the dwarf actor are made all the more awkward by his memories of what went wrong.There are also strong connections with Bad Lieutenant, Abel Ferrara's striking depiction of Catholic guilt and redemption. Like Harvey Keitel's character, Ken and Ray are struggling with the ins and outs of judgement and redemption, struggling to come to terms with their purpose and meaning as they stare increasingly into the abyss. There are conversations about purgatory, and the film-within-a-film refers to Hieronymus Bosch, a 15th-century painter famous for his depictions of hell.Within this context, Bruges becomes the purgatory into which our characters have landed and whose attitude reflects their ultimate ability or willingness to escape. Ray feels immense guilt for what happened to the child, but this guilt is matched by a desire to atone and escape. His final words, as he is loaded into the ambulance and passes out, see him leaving purgatory, content with death over remaining there even if death leads to damnation. Ken, on the other hand, is more resigned to his fate and is less willing to put up a fight when Harry's angel of death arrives. Having killed many more men than Ray, he knows that he will never see heaven. Although he attempts to help Ray both in life and death, he ultimately allows death to find him and puts up very little resistance.

But by far and away, the biggest debt of In Bruges is to Harold Pinter, specifically The Dumb Waiter from which most of the premise is taken. It shares the central idea of two hitmen who spend most of their time talking and arguing about things which seem utterly irrelevant but are in fact nothing of the sort. And the final twist is the same, although this is revealed a lot earlier than in Pinter's script. The only massive departure, in terms of character at least, comes in the role of Harry, played with typical venom by Ralph Fiennes. Dumb is the last word you would use to describe his character, whose every word feels like an acidic curse even when he isn't swearing his mouth off.Because the genre ingredients are so familiar and knowingly played, there are two traps into which In Bruges could easily fall. The first is descending into total caricature, along the lines of Guy Ritchie's early efforts: the language and gestures become so ridiculous that all sense of believability is lost. Although Harry is particularly outrageous in his behaviour, the film stays just the right side of caricature, playing up the absurd elements while using the language and violence to keep us feeling threatened even as we laugh ourselves silly. A typical example of this would be Fiennes' first appearance, when he smashes his office phone to pieces in frustration. It's very funny to see a grown man concentrate his rage on something so small so repeatedly, but even as we laugh we realise that he is capable of doing the same thing to something more fleshy, with horrible consequences.The second, more common trap is that the ordinary nature of the story acts as a lead weight on the character development: in other words, the story is too thin or straightforward either to allow extended character development, or to give any reason for such a thing to occur. While In Bruges doesn't completely fall into this trap, its story is disappointingly simple once all the language, violence and pondering has been stripped away.

Because of its clear resemblance to Pinter's work, one could argue that this criticism should not be levelled against McDonagh but Pinter himself. Pinter was part of a theatrical tradition started by Beckett in which characters existed and acted regardless of or in absence of any story - Beckett's later plays often occur well after the action has taken place, and said action is only referred to in passing. But this paucity of actual plot has not prevented some of Pinter's other works from translating successfully to the screen, most notably The Birthday Party and Betrayal.In Bruges is caught between a rock and a hard place in its relationship to genre. On the one hand, the touchstones to previous crime thrillers are so clear that it struggles to escape from convention when it really needs to: we know more or less where it is going even before Harry arrives, and so its scope for exploring things on a profoundly existential level is limited. On the other hand, when it does manage to elevate itself above convention, there is not enough narrative drive in the characters to prevent their conversations from going around in circles. As The Bed-Sitting Room proved, it is difficult to put work in Beckett's vein on screen without it feeling lacking in narrative, something which is perhaps less of a problem on stage.While this aspect of In Bruges remains frustrating, the film is still thoroughly entertaining thanks to the quality of its cast. Fiennes is the highlight, with Harry being clearly modelled on the work of Louis Mellis and David Scinto: in his relentlessness and constant anger, he could pass for a cousin of Don Logan. That said, his performance wouldn't work without someone more understated to counterpoint him, and Farrell achieves that masterfully. Having drifted in his career between total fluff (Alexander) and pretentious waffle (The New World), he gets the balance spot on to deliver a performance of vulnerability and sympathy. Gleeson anchors things in another fine performance, and Clemence Poesy is every bit as sweet and charming here as she was in Philip Ridley's Heartless.In Bruges is an interesting, entertaining and often hilarious take on a well-worn story and subject area. It is ultimately a little too generic for its own good, with McDonagh wrestling with the self-imposed confinements of genre in an effort to combine existentialism and narrative. The result is a partial success which makes for great late-night viewing, and while not up there with Gangster No. 1 or Sexy Beast, it comes through with most of the goods and hints at better things to come for its director.

Rating:
Verdict: Overly generic but highly entertaining

The Passenger (USA, 1975)
Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni
Starring Jack Nicholson, Maria Schneider, Jenny Runacre, Ian Hendry

There is an argument put forward by film theorists that today's audiences are incapable of appreciating older films. The saturation of our culture with music videos and the internet creates a natural impatience, which carries over into cinema through increasingly rapid editing and flashier cinematography. This causes the simplification of imagery and the symbols which lie behind them, and the whole process begins feeding on itself until we are all infantilised.Notwithstanding its inherent arrogance towards the cinema-going public, this theory is flawed because it is based upon a nostalgic assumption about older films. Contrary to its assumptions, potentially great films are often reduced to being merely good or very good, not by shortcomings in their audience but in the difficult attitude they take towards presenting their ideas. The Passenger is a typical example, being a revered classic which is indeed very good, but whose flaws are easy to acknowledge and prevent it from ever being great.The Passenger is Michelangelo Antonioni's third and final feature in the English language, the others being Blow-Up and Zabriskie Point. Like many of his films, it explores the issue of alienation, specifically of characters feeling isolated and out of place in the world around them. But where Zabriskie Point attempts this analysis with an entire generation, embodied by the two students who make love in the desert, The Passenger is a lot more focussed, more personal and ultimately more successful.The film explores the extent to which a single act or idea can alter an individual's life, using the trading of identities as a means to explore existential disillusionment. When we first meet David Locke, expertly played by Jack Nicholson, he is bored of his life, bored of his work and desperate to escape to somewhere where no-one can find him. He trades identities with the dead man in the next room believing that he can start his life over, without any baggage or responsibilities: for once he can live the way he wants, for as long as he wants.

Having taken on this mantle, and changed from Locke to Robertson, our leading man quickly finds himself in dangerous circumstances worthy of any thriller. The scene in the church, in which Nicholson bluffs his way through a meeting with the men he is supplying with arms, is reminiscent of Richard Hannay during the political meeting in The 39 Steps. Both characters have to think on their feet to convince the world that they are someone else, making all decisions and giving all answers based purely on impulse and guesswork.But unlike John Buchan's novel, or any of the film versions that followed, the thrills in The Passenger are much more internalised. There is a thriller-like plot, both in Locke's new identity as a gun runner and in the efforts of his director and wife to track him down. But these elements have to take equal billing to the existential thrust of the film, which is interested in identity and the internalised conflicts of the central character. The film manages to balance the two very well, giving us enough moments of jeopardy and near-misses to keep the less patient among us interested.The central idea of The Passenger is that all men (and possibly women) are bound by the same doubts, fears and anxieties. Assuming a new identity is not a feasible means to escape from oneself, no matter how methodically one goes about it. On the one hand, 'Robertson' finds himself bound to supply guns which he cannot possibly deliver; the second he takes the down-payment in the church, he becomes a wanted man. On the other hand, elements of Locke in his previous life begin to encroach, as his initial enthusiasm begins to give way to melancholy, cynicism, and finally an all-encompassing sense of futility.

The key scene in The Passenger comes in the last ten minutes, where Locke and The Girl are in hiding in a hotel, knowing full well that the former will soon be killed. Locke relates a story of a blind man who regains his sight: the man was initially elated, but this vision exposed him to the horrors of the world which he could previously only imagine, and he ended up a recluse who committed suicide. This is the nub of the film: what seems like a chance to escape the world and see it with new eyes only leads to greater suffering. Ultimately all we can do is accept our status as passengers, unable to influence the mechanics of this world and fully mindful that whatever we do, death will always catch up with us.This outlook is furthered by Antonioni's direction, which highlights how small and helpless the characters are. Whether they are crawling through the desert or in the busy streets of an inner city, the central characters are presented from a distance, insignificant in the face of all around them. Even in its most romantic moment, when it appears that Locke and the girl have made love, the camera keeps its distance, peering through the doorway when other directors would have taken us up close and personal. The film is beautifully shot with washed-out colours and a series of interesting camera angle.The most famous of these is the penultimate scene, a seven-minute tracking shot which is both a technical showcase (predating the Steadicam) and a poetic means to bring the story to a close. As Locke lights up a cigarette and lies down on the bed, the camera moves slowly forward through the bars of the window, out into the square, follows the movements of several characters before turning around and drifting back in to find Locke dead. This is Locke's soul taking flight, finally escaping from this world into something new, and taking one last look at what he is leaving behind.

For all its virtues, The Passenger is not without its faults. Even to those familiar with Antonioni's style, or more general trends in European filmmaking, the film is very, very slow and around half an hour too long. Because the emphasis is so much on emotion rather than plot, its story could have been handled in 90 minutes without losing any impact, whether visually or emotionally. Antonioni's languorous shooting style with long slow takes and almost no soundtrack can seem pretentious on occasion, albeit not so much that we lose all interest in what is happening.
The other problem with The Passenger is the sense of distance involved. Just as, in the words of David Lynch, the artist needn't suffer to show suffering, so the audience shouldn't necessary be alienated during a film about alienation. Like the work of Tom Kalin, The Passenger keeps its audience at arms' length, not out of coyness about its subject matter, but because that seems the natural way to tell the story. And as with Swoon or Savage Grace, this decision may be the right one, but it makes connecting with the characters more difficult, putting the entire story in jeopardy.The Passenger is an intriguing and haunting work whose influence on modern cinema continues, as seen by its substantial presence in Anton Corbijn's The American. Jack Nicholson is on good form, albeit not quite as good as in Chinatown, and the film is recommended viewing for anyone interested in European cinema. For all its faults and bits that drag, there is a slow-burning profundity to it, which keeps it an enticing and memorable experience for generations to come.

Rating: 4/5
Verdict: A haunting and intriguing slow-burner

The American (USA, 2010)
Directed by Anton Corbijn
Starring George Clooney, Violante Placido, Thekla Reuten, Paolo Bonacelli

The American is Anton Corbijn's difficult second album. Having established his reputation as a rock photographer and video director, his full-length debut Control demonstrated his great talent and potential as a feature filmmaker. The American retains the cool artistic edge of that work while using George Clooney's star power to pull in a mainstream audience. While nothing like as remarkable or original as his debut, it is a very solid and capable effort which should cement his career.After a decade in which the spy genre has been dominated by the Bourne series, The American is a throwback to the more downbeat, introspective thrillers of the 1960s and 1970s. It harks back to a time when leading men dealt with their problems and insecurities not by emptying magazines at faceless bad guys, but by wandering through landscapes and lying low in European villages. The title is deceptive to the point of being irrelevant - had it been made in Italian, it could have been called La Farfalla (The Butterfly), for reasons that will become clear.

It doesn't take long to realise that this is not going to be your typical Bond-style action movie. After a slow romantic opening, Clooney is forced to kill in cold blood two assassins who have been stalking him for reasons unknown. Having done so, he promptly shoots his lover in the head, knowing he must get away and leave no trace. It's certainly not what Bond would do, although it would explain how he manages to get through so many girlfriends.With only Clooney to focus on, the film is left to be carried by his performance. And fortunately for us, it's really good. As he demonstrated in Michael Clayton and to some extent Solaris, Clooney is at his best playing emotionally withdrawn, locked-down characters. He is reaching an age where his looks can still sell a film to the rom-com crowd, but there is enough character in his face to read in subtle emotional shifts during all those long takes. His character is a close cousin of Jack Nicholson's in The Passenger, with Mathilde and Clara standing in for different aspects of Maria Schneider.There are other similarities with Antonioni's masterpiece as well. Both films are about characters who trade identities (in this case Jack pretending to be Edward), a decision which is ultimately their undoing. Both are existential thrillers in which the thrills are largely internalised; they are at their most fundamental about the conflicts of a tormented soul and Man's attempts to escape from Himself. And both are incredibly downbeat, relying on the shut-down nature of the performances and subtle camerawork. The famous penultimate shot in The Passenger, which signifies the passing or escape of Jack Nicholson's spirit, is reflected in the ending of The American, as the camera moves from Clooney slumped over the wheel to following a butterfly as it floats off into the sky.

Although it never comes close to the quality of The Passenger, there are a number of impressive scenes in The American which do its genre justice. The plot is a slow-burning one, with the various events unfolding at the same pace as life in the sleepy Italian town. If nothing else the film deserves credit for having the strength of its convictions by not blowing everything up at the end. It feels long, and it requires patience and concentration, but it is ultimately rewarding.The American is a film which takes pride in precision. It celebrates the level of craft which goes into telling a story and which Clooney employs when assembling a gun. The scenes of him designing and assembling the weapon are constructed like a Swiss watch, with every frame fitting perfectly into place and the various plot developments coming along like different machines on a production line. It's as much a film about the art of constructing a thriller as it is about the plot and characters therein, and it succeeds in leaving you guessing about the extent to which various characters are involved and for what reason. The dialogue is clipped and often clinical; the conversations between Edward and Mathilde have a refreshing absence of small talk, opting for something a great deal more constructive.

The American is also a visually beautiful film. As he demonstrated amply in Control, Corbijn has a great eye for composition and for marrying light and shadows. The 'action' moments, where Clooney is being hunted through the cobbled backstreets, are reminiscent of Carol Reed's The Third Man in their use of shadow and claustrophobic architecture to create suspense. But he handles the daylight shots just as well, filling the screen with a drained-out but vivid palette which encapsulates Edward's predicament: his desire to blend in and lie low is juxtaposed with new-found passion in his relationship with Clara.Sadly, the visuals are also the first indication of the problems with The American. Although for the most part the film is beautifully shot, it is occasionally over-directed to the point at which it becomes indulgent. We could have done without a lot of the nude scenes between Edward and Clara, in which the screen is filled with enough red to light the whole of Amsterdam. These scenes are where the film wanders very close to the territory of Le Mépris, with the camera lingering for longer than seems necessary, even considering the tone and pace of the film as a whole.The bigger problem with The American, however, is that not a great deal of it is original. There have been dozens of films about spies or secret agents having to lie low in distant villages, or taking on one last job in order that they may leave the service. In addition to the thrillers of Antonioni or Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samourai, there are many films which focus on the build-up to a mission, the most famous being The Day of the Jackal. This is even referenced directly in the scene where Mathilde tries out the weapon for the first time, with the metal sunflower standing in for the watermelon on which Edward Fox unleashes his exploding bullets.This feeling of overfamiliarity, if not overt cliché, is carried over into the personal dilemmas faced by Clooney's character. Many films of this kind, including those already mentioned, find our character exploring the relationship between the physical and spiritual worlds, between the job and his conscience, and ultimately having to choose between the two. The American is almost unashamed in continuing this trend, reducing the conflict to Edward's friendships with a priest and a prostitute, with the former increasingly being marginalised.Once we accept the film as something a lot more hackneyed than we might at first assume, the acid test becomes whether or not Corbijn's creative decision-making is enough to prevent it from either being pretentious or from collapsing under the weight of generic convention. In all, it is a success, with his strong visual style and knack for dialogue carrying us through the dodgier moments. The various twists which surround Edward being betrayed are very well-orchestrated, and like all great thrillers you are made to revisit little details which you dismissed earlier on, which have somehow become key to understanding the mystery. Even if certain elements of the resolution are contrived, there is enough invention or skill at work to prevent us from giving up.The American is an interesting attempt to take a well-worn, cliché-ridden story and update it while paying tribute to the masters of the genre. It cuts the mustard as a film about a man at the end of his tether having an existential crisis and being hunted down by his friends, and the central twist involving the weapon works really well. It's too generic and occasionally too indulgent to be given a clean bill of health. But it is a welcome and refreshing antidote to the many poor rip-offs of Jason Bourne.

Rating: 3.5/5
Verdict: A hackneyed but handsome old-school thriller