Underneath the disguise of his character Farrell relishes his Ray’s idiotic impulsivity and the opportunity to drop F-bombs with frequency enough to earn Tony “Scarface” Montana’s approval (the word, and its derivatives, are uttered 126 times). Behind his mischievous Irish eyes - like a comic strip thought bubble - you can almost read his thoughts: I’m more comfortable in an actor’s skin than my own. Sometimes the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. The three male leads all appear remarkably at ease with the blasphemous dialogue, making it seem like a more necessary, functional article of speech than it has any right to.
Boss Waters advises Ken that Ray must be dispatched to pay for his on-the-job mistake. In gangster calculations, addition by subtraction. Maybe Bruges is purgatory, or worse. Even in the face of Waters’ gun-toting persuasiveness, Ken, having unintentionally diverted Ray’s suicide attempt while on a mission to kill him, thinks better of eliminating his apprentice. “The kid” deserves a chance to walk away from the life and begin anew. A case of gangster humanity. Life is more fragile for some than others, depending on whose got the bullets. Nevertheless, Fiennes’ palpably indignant Waters isn’t pleased. If you want something done right, do it yourself. For a man of Waters’ precision and principles, these crises of compunction are rubbish.
With Bruges’ cobblestone streets and stonework structures suggesting an antiquated aura, a violent showdown among three mobsters with competing psychological motivations is imminent. Sophomore writer-director Martin McDonagh (Six Shooter, 2004) captures a cast of cutthroat characters that carry on in a gratuitous, architecturally sumptuous universe much like you’d imagine Vincent Vega (John Travolta) to have roamed about before returning to the states in Pulp Fiction (1994). Guns, drugs, and sex, all wildly depicted and juxtapositioned with old world sensibilities. Taken together, crisscrossing the pond, crime's contraints knowing no borders.
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