I meant to see Seven Psychopaths (2012) and then saw it, some of it, then I forgot I saw it, re-Netflixed it, and only remembered I'd seen it halfway halfway through, so it was already pointless to stop a second time. I know what that says about me (nothing good) but what does that say about its writer-director, the "Irish Tarantino," Martin McDonagh? His play, The Lieutenant of Inishmore was bloody funny. I saw it on Broadway totally by chance via a relative of my last AA sponsee who was in the cast. It was a great thing to see free. McDonagh's first big film In Bruges was also refreshingly dark and hilarious, and didn't even need a point, aside from that McDonagh loves that Stephen Frears movie, The Hit (who doesn't?). But Psychopaths, McDonagh's tale of a drunk Irish writer (Colin Farrell, modeling himself no doubt after McDonagh) who has come to Hollywood as Barton Fink once did, high on Hollywood's reverence for playwrights, is worse than some Vancouver-shot made-for-Cinemax After Dark crime sex thriller which at least would have the integrity of sucking. This has too many established cult stars for that. They make it worth not turning off within 20 minutes, which is the best option. But who can turn off a film with Christopher Walken, Tom Waits, Sam Rockwell, and Woody Harrelson? At least you got to slog halfway through, or keep it on while you get back to your book.
As an alcoholic writer though, I might be prejudiced to hate any film about a well-to-do dissolute drunk ex-pat who who somehow thinks coming up with the name Seven Psychopaths and then expecting his friends to write the rest for him while he lives the semi-high life with hot girlfriend and is daily ushered on adventures by a crazy motherfucker Boondock Saint of a broheim muse, played by the ever-jiving Sam Rockwell. Dude, even for self-reflexive blocked writer movies, doing the whole blocked and/or hack writer thing with the low life muse getting you into jams that slowly become the movie you're writing is really played out, and was even in Charlie Kaufman's script for Adaptation (2002), which at least had the good sense to blow up the bridge behind itself as far as writing about how hard it is to write scripts, and the decency to actually have a source text not about itself (The Orchid Thief by Susan Lean). I don't mean that as a compliment, because instead of dry heaving the day away in the cold comfort of his own bathroom floor like a real writer would (ala William Faulkner in Barton Fink), Nic Cage's character thinks it's enough to writhe in self-conscious torment, never getting the severe solipsistic narcissism at the core of such emotions (he should be drinking!) and Farrell's character thinks its enough to feign both narcissism and torment while smoking and drinking only as much as the producers will allow. Struggling screenwriters around the world, some of whom might even be talented, would blah blah, okay just me, I've always thought about one day writing a feature length script, and am sure it would be a smash hit, and I plan to write it one day, maybe, don't rush me, goddamn it...
I know a screenwriter who wrote lots of them, makes a decent amount of money, and lost some of it to me at poker, and starting around 1997 I heard about a film he was writing and then was picked up and he was scouting locations with the scouts and letting us know he had Tom Hanks and Susan Sarandon aboard, and then was on set and working hard etc., only having the whole thing dump right to video, after sinking years and years of his life into it, and it was called Elvis Has Left the Building, the "other" Elvis impersonator crime spree movie besides 2000 Miles to Graceland.
And even now nothing gets me more pissed than hearing a screenwriter on easy street trying to pass his writer's block off as entertainment via sly post-modern mirror effect, and writing his characters into thinking it's a kick-ass idea. For one thing, after seeing how blithely my friend handled the whole experience made me realize I was never going to be a screenwriter. I would have blown a gasket having to watch my years of work go straight to the Blockbuster 2-for-$5 bin.
So.. Colin Farrell... he's got the title... so great. Why wouldn't it be great? He was so good in In Bruges he would seem a no-brainer as McDonagh's drunk Irish screenwriter stand-in. He's got it all: a bitchy American girlfriend (the perennially indignant Abbie Cornish from Limitless), his two-bit charismatic hustler leading him into scrapes, and... what else... oh yeah, a pen. Y'know... ferwritin'. Everything's set for brilliance, and I refuse to believe the man who gave us one of the most climactic cat entrances in the history of the legitimate theater could crank out something so pleased with its half-baked 'stale-even-when-Guy-Ritchie-was-first-ripping-off-Tarantino' laddishness. It may have helped if we'd seen in the film some of Farrel's character's earlier work (as in Adaptation when we see Charlie on the set of Malkovich), how great it would have been had we seen him in Belgium giving script notes? Then Farrell could have the crazy projection of his oqn unconscious ego and probably cut loose a little more, recognized the need for some Bogey (as in Play it Again Sam) or darkness, ala John Goodman in Barton Fink, or the bunny rabbit in Donnie Darko. Instead he's more like the rabbit in Harvey, or John Goodman in Red State. Sure there's Christopher Walken as a dognapper but man he's gotten old. and he has a dying black wife who may or may not be a younger black wife of Tom Waits in flashback, both of whom have been unfairly perhaps left off all the Seven Psychopath posters and publicity tours. If that didn't sting, to be in a movie about vengeance and being maligned by society and in turn spurned by even that very movie, left off all the advertising for the crime of being.... what? B-list?
Farrell is not convincing as either a drunk or a writer and he's certainly not one of the seven. He's too kinetic and cocky, he has no shakes, no quivers, he is just barely hungover and even at the height of his abusive cups he never slurs a syllable. Imagine if he did, or if his Irish accent got more pronounced, blacker, more violent as he drank, something to go with his sudden outbursts? Imagine if he had brought some real intensity to the role, given us a reason for him to be Irish, been acting a Wellesian uber-serious MacBeth in a room full of vapid scenesters. The drunknenness seems a facile pose, the kind of drunk character no true drunk would ever write. Waits and Walken and a little bit of Harrelson are the only gravitas to be found.
You know what was funny In Bruges!? Everything was funny in In Bruges! But especially Farrell.
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| Amanda Warren, vengeance shall be thine! |
Martin McDonagh is a good looking lad with a Sting-esque jaw and crystal blue eyes. I haven't given up on him. He should have played the Farrell character and left the directing to someone else who might have hipped him to the fact that unironic post-modern self-reflexivity has become banal. It's not McDonagh's fault, coming up as he has in the very very different world of theater, such as The Lieutenant of Inishmore, which rocked a similar tack, only with the psychopath having a cat instead of a little dog, and a genuinely dangerous girl psychopath with some actual dialogue, and a lot more blood and guts. If we bear this past triumph in mind, the desperation of Farrell's character is understandable, when operating farther from Irish minutiae he's like a panicked bronco, flaring up in all directions in the chance Hollywood will just at some point rise to its feet, cry bravo, and grant him a green card.
Theater has always been self- reflexive, much more so than most other idioms. Half the early Hollywood pre-code sound films, if not all, were written by Broadway wits lured west by big money who loved to write about Broadway wits being lured west by big money. Show/movies like A Chorus Line and Chicago and even Phantom are ingrained in the celluloid conscience as suitable for framing and all are about razzle dazzle and the great White Way in one way or the other, to name only a few (older ones, of course, A Chorus Line, Twentieth Century, All About Eve). Gotta dance Gotta dance God... ta... dannnse.. But what works in the theater doesn't play in action movies all a-stud with stars playing halfway ass up into Entourage-ville.
All that said, I really loved In Bruges (above) but even that would have been impossible outside of its setting (a film shoot); what worked there was a horror and fascination with the beery surrealism of Belgium and the way what we consider enchanting and old school is just icky in the eyes of Brits; and all they can agree on is that Yank tourists need a good thrashing and that if you have any cocaine they will go home with you and stay until it's gone and then help you find more. And the filmmakers-within-the-film shooting a scene with baller little person extras and fog machines was a great back-drop for the action. It was original, clever, but not at all full of itself. Here, alas, every self-effacing moment in our drunk screenwriter's odyssey carries a coded message of self-aggrandizement that sticks in the craw almost to Shyamalanian toxicity.
I usually don't bother with negative reviews. Life is too short and I'm too marginal and outsider to afford alienating anyone, but if I don't this time, I'll probably forget I saw it and watch it again in a few years. And that I cannot allow. So forgive me, Woody Harrelson, as I forgive those directors who trespass on your unique comedic brilliance like drunken burglars.
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| Next time, a speaking role! |
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