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Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes, Clémence Poésy, Jérémie Renier ... see more see more... , Jordan Prentice , Thekla Reuten , Mark C. Donovan , Eric Godon , Rudy Blomme , Theo Stevenson , Elizabeth Berrington , Olivier Bonjour , Stephanie Carey , Jamie Edgell , Ann Elsley , Jean Mark Favorin , Zeljko Ivanek , Sachi Kimura , Anna Madeley , Lois Nummy , Inez Stinton , Emily Thorling , Angel Witney , Bonnie Witney , Ran Yaniv

Having just carried out a particularly difficult hit in London, two hitmen seek shelter in Bruges, Belgium, only to find their views on life and death permanently altered by their interactions with th... read more read more...e locals, the tourists, and a film crew. Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, and Ralph Fiennes star in an action comedy from director Martin McDonagh. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

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159 critics

R, 1 hr. 47 min.

Directed by: Martin McDonagh

Release Date: January 17, 2008

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DVD Release Date: June 24, 2008

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Flixster Reviews (16,797)

  • fb1463751009
    March 8, 2012
    fb1463751009
    "In Bruges" is criminally underrated. The pitch dark comedy is definitely an acquired taste, but it finds its identity in it. Loved it due to its astute and clever screenplay. Obviously, the screenplay wouldn't have been able to last without good acting and surprisingly, this is ... read moreCollin Farrell's best performance in my opinion.
  • jarobb3
    February 21, 2012
    jarobb3
    Clever, and you might get through the entire movie without wanting to punch Colin Farrell in the face for being a sleeze (though you may still want to punch him in the face). The real star of the show is Ralph Fiennes -- until he shows up with his one-liners, you may be looking a... read moret your watch to see how much time is left.

    Definitely queue this one up in Netflix.
  • cosmo313
    January 3, 2012
    cosmo313
    Two Irish hitmen are made to seek shelter and lay low in the town of Bruges in Belgium, a nice, quiet, scenic, fairy tale type of place after their most recent job had a rather large hiccup in it. So, until their angry crime boss employer Harry (Ralph Fiennes) contacts them, Ray ... read more(Colin Farrell) and Ken (Brendan Gleeson) must hang out and try to enjoy themselves, something that seems fae easier for the older, more reserved Ken than it does for the younger, antsy Ray.

    Given the set up, and the fact that this has some really funny and witty dialogue, and that it is a darkly comedic thriller (huge emphasis on dark, not as much on thriller-it's not an action movie, well, not conventionally), this could have easily turned into a very typical and derivative film.

    That it is not is not only a blessing, but also something really awesome, becuase it shows there's hope that originality, style, and creativity haven't completely died out...yet

    A lot of this mvoie is just Ken and Ray sightseeing and bantering back and forth, but these are developed characters who are both really interesting, have actual stuff to talk about, and there's some good subtext and symbolism as well, which I always appreciate, especially when it is of the religious, yet not preachy variety.

    The film was shot on location, and the results are great. This is a neat looking city, and I wouldn't be surprised if the place hasn't had an increase in tourists over the past four years as a result of this movie. It seems like the sort of place I'd probably be interested in seeing, but not just becuase of this film. The score, done by one of my favorites (Carter Burwell), is quite nice, which is to be expected, and, while it is really good overall, it does a particularly good job of bringing out the darker side of the story, especially when we find out why the pair are in Bruges, and why they act the way they do, especially Ray.

    Gleeson and Farrell are wonderful together, and have good chemistry. I've seen several films with Gleeson in them before, but I never really thought much of the man. I think I'll be changing this now. For thsoe who think that Farrell doesn't have talent, just see this movie. He won a Golden Globe for his work, and he really does do a good job. I've never doubted he had real talent, but this seals the deal. Ralph Fiennes is also quite good at playing the cold blooded and menacing crime boss.

    All in all, this is quite a terrific work. It's just mainstream enough to appeal to a wide audience, yet artsy enough to set it apart from the typical crap that gets made about hitmen in foreign places without reeking of pretentiousness. Do yourself a favor and give this one a watch, it's awesome.
  • CreedsDelight
    September 29, 2011
    CreedsDelight
    Ken: Harry, let's face it. You've always been a cunt. The only thing that's gonna change, is that you're gonna be an even bigger cunt. Maybe have some more cunt kids.

    Brilliant. Flat out Brilliant. I adore the hell out of this film. It concerns Ray (Colin Farrell), a hitman who ... read moreseeks shelter in Bruges, Belgium with his partner, Ken (Brendan Gleeson) after a hit goes wrong and ends in Ray murdering a young child. Ray is quite a bitter man. He spends his days in the boring place that is Bruges mocking dwarfs, obese families, and wooing "foreign" women.

    'In Bruges' is one of my favorites. Why? Because I bloody well think so, that's why. Sharp, witty, and fast-paced dialogue is literally what consists of 3/4 of the film. Martin McDonagh is one of the best modern directors today. What McDonagh does that others don't is knows how to direct dialogue going hand-in-hand with delightful cinematography. Class act job, Mr. McDonagh.

    Farrell and Gleeson do great together. They both have thick accents, that are nice for a change considering the amount of films Farrell has had to use an American accent. Gleeson, on the other hand, had his thick accent in all of the Harry Potter films. Voldemort, err- Ralph Fiennes is additionally in this movie (two Potter stars in one film, shocking), and is quite solid despite the lack of screen time that he was given. Oh yeah, this is ALSO an action movie. Very well put together sequences go hand-in-hand with the magnificent script, direction, dialogue, performances, and everything else that makes 'In Bruges' one of the best films in cinematic history.
  • mumby1988
    September 1, 2011
    mumby1988
    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 barnstormi... read moreng 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.
  • jennifxu
    July 30, 2011
    jennifxu
    Oh. my. gosh. I did not know what to expect at all but all those blew out of the water once I was introduced to the fairytale city of Bruges. The atmosphere is SO netherworldly, so hazy yet cerebral, it's like you have all the time in the world to think but the thoughts that come... read more out of your mind are as dreamlike as the city. It's so unexpectedly funny but then it quickly shifts moods from comic to tragic to pensive to tragicomic.

    The most masterful moments come when everything is still. I don't know how anyone can create such an original combination of genres and assorted moods. The location choice is flawless.
  • pier007
    May 26, 2011
    pier007
    Hilarious thriller/dark comedy with great acting chemistry and dialogue concerning all kinds of seemingly unrelated and serious things like moral integrity, xenofobia or existential issues, toned down by humorous vulgarity and pop culture references. A delight for us undemanding ... read morecinephiles, all pedant pseudo intellectuals better stay away unless you want to start nagging and questioning the quality and entertainment value of this little wonder.
  • ythelastman89
    May 24, 2011
    ythelastman89
    When Bruges is related to a fairytale place, it seems to make sense. Not just in the context of the story, but in terms of what the movie is trying to accomplish. This allows around five different genres to happily co-exist with one another and for characters to act extremely bon... read morekers and appear normal. It's a fairly easy story to pick up on, but the way it is executed shows how intelligent it really is. It's hard to say what In Bruges really is; comedy, action, drama, love story, and modern fairytale don't seem to do it justice in the slightest. This tackles so many different emotions that you're sort've just left with an experience unlike anything else. Now that shouldn't be confused with the typical offbeat indie movie; this doesn't try to be overtly bizarre or "quirky", it just is what it is. A lot of why this story and these characters work so well is due to the amazing performances from Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson and a third act appearance from a nutso Ralph Fiennes. Colin Farrell's unbelievably effective comedic timing and believability makes for some of the most enjoyable moments in the movie. I think this is actually one of my favorite performances from him, but he's consistently good in everything so it's hard to pick this out as his best. Brendan Gleeson's overly happy/cultured hitman routine is great in comparison because the resulting chemistry is great. Now it's easy to just sort've pass this movie by, but it really is a complete masterpiece in terms of accomplishing a multi-genred and truly unique form of storytelling and presentation.
  • fb634552688
    May 8, 2011
    fb634552688
    Both funny and haunting. When I first tried watching it I thought it was boring, but after rewatching it I am impressed by the depth of the writing and the display of wit throughout the entire movie.
  • MrsInsomnia
    May 2, 2011
    MrsInsomnia
    I honestly fall asleep!!!!!!!

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Critic Reviews

Bob Mondello
October 18, 2008
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. Full Review

Tom Charity
October 18, 2008
Tom Charity, CNN.com

For all his movie's tough talk, it's a sometimes slipshod construction. Full Review

Roger Moore
February 22, 2008
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. Full Review

Tom Long
February 15, 2008
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. Full Review

Amy Biancolli
February 15, 2008
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 ... Full Review

Steven Rea
February 15, 2008
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. Full Review

Bill Goodykoontz
February 15, 2008
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. Full Review

Richard Roeper
February 11, 2008
Richard Roeper, Ebert & Roeper

I thought it was fantastic.

Claudia Puig
February 8, 2008
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. Bu... Full Review

Peter Howell
February 8, 2008
Peter Howell, Toronto Star

A rude and riotous laugher. Full Review

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Facts

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    • Natalie: Harry. Harry! It's a inanimate fucking object!
    • Harry: You're an inanimate fuckin' object!
    • Ken: Harry, let's face it. And I'm not being funny. I mean no disrespect, but you're a cunt. You're a cunt now, and you've always been a cunt. And the only thing that's going to change is that you're going to be an even bigger cunt. Maybe have some more cunt kids.
    • Harry: Leave my kids fucking out of it! What have they done? You fucking retract that bit about my cunt fucking kids!
    • Ken: I retract that bit about your cunt fucking kids.
    • Harry: Insult my fucking kids? That's going overboard, mate!
    • Ken: I retracted it, didn't I?
    • Eirik: I was trying to rob him. And he took my gun from me. And the gun was full of blanks. And he shot a blank into my eye. And now I cannot see from this eye ever again, the doctors say.
    • Harry: Well to be honest it sounds like it's all your fault.
    • Eirik: What?
    • Harry: I mean basically if you're robbing a man and you're only carrying blanks and you allow your gun to be taken off you and you allow yourself to be shot in the eye with a blank which I assume that the person has to get quite close to you then, yeah really it's all your fault for being such a poof, so why don't you stop wingeing and cheer the fuck up.
    • Yuri: Eirek - I really wouldn't respond.
    • Eirik: I thought you wanted the guy dead?
    • Harry: I do want the guy dead, I want him fucking crucified but it don't change the fact that he stitched you up like a blind little gay boy, does it?
    • Harry: So he's having a really nice time?
    • Ken: Well, I'm having a really nice time. I'm not sure it's really his cup of tea.
    • Harry: What?
    • Ken: You know, I'm not sure it's really his thing.
    • Harry: What do you mean it's not really his thing? What's that supposed to mean? It's not really his thing. What the fuck is that supposed to mean?
    • Ken: Nothing, Harry.
    • Harry: It's a fairytale town, isn't it? How's a fairytale town not somebody's fucking thing?
    • Ray: One gay beer for my gay friend, one normal beer for me because I am normal.
    • Ray: A bottle! Don't bother.
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In Bruges Trivia

  • I was Ken in "In Bruges", Mad-Eye Moody in "Harry Potter" and King Menelaus in "Troy". Who am I?  Answer »
  • Ray fancied a girl in "In Bruges". What was her name?  Answer »
  • which of these movies is NOT a remake of a foreign film?  Answer »
  • In the film In Bruges (2008), how much change Ken has left when he is at the Bell Tower?  Answer »
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