In Bruges

Surely the whole comedy hitmen shtick is played out by now? Ever since Pulp Fiction made hitmen hip, we've been subjected to hundreds of lovable rapscallions firing quips like bullets and laughing in the face of blown-off faces... the whole thing's gone way beyond a joke.

So I wasn't expecting much from In Bruges, a film about two hitmen (played by Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson) sent to Belgium to lay low after a contract goes wrong. But in the post-Iron Man / pre-Indiana Jones oasis, there wasn't anything else we were remotely interested in watching at the cinema this weekend (Speed Racer!? Please!) so we thought we'd give this a... shot.

Mighty glad we did. In Bruges is the funniest film I've seen in some time. It's also refreshingly different from any other comedy hitman film, largely because - for the first half at least - there's not a gun in sight. Gleeson and Farrell are the perfect comic pairing. Gleeson just wants to soak up the culture and history of the ancient medieval city, while Farrell pouts like a petulant child being dragged round a museum by his grandparents.

"If I'd grown up on a farm and was retarded, Bruges might impress me, but I didn't, so it doesn't."

(It was at this point that Louise nudged me as if to say, "you'd be impressed by Bruges.")

Like a stroppy, foul-mouthed Father Dougal, Farrell staves off the boredom by insulting midgets, getting conned by cute Belgium drug dealers, and starting fights with Canadians in restaurants. But while both he and Gleeson are excellent, it's Ralph Fiennes who walks away with the film as their nasty cockney gangster boss Harry.

"Number One, why aren't you in when I fucking told you to be? Number Two, why doesn't this hotel have fucking phones with fucking voicemail on them and not have to leave messages with the fucking receptionist? Number Three you better fucking be in tomorrow night when I fucking call again or there'll be fucking Hell to pay. I'm fucking telling you."

According to the IMDb, "the word 'fuck' and its derivatives are said 126 times in this 107-minute film, an average of 1.18 'fucks' per minute"*. That surprised me. I could have sworn it was more. There's also one key scene between Gleeson and Fiennes where an even more colourful Anglo-saxon swearword gets used more than I've ever heard it on film before - to frankly hilarious effect. I can go two ways with swearing in films - if it's used for a cheap laugh when the script can't manage it any other way (as in Billy Elliott and its ilk), I get annoyed. But when it's used to emphasize an already funny script - and where it's appropriate to the dialect of the characters in question (Dublin Irish and Cockney London, where at least one 'fookin' or 'fakkin' now has to be included in every utterance by law)... well, then I have no complaints at all.

I don't buy half as many films on DVD as I once did, mainly because I can never find the time to watch them. That said, I'll be picking up In Bruges as soon as it comes out, and not just for the laughs. There's a surprising depth to the characters presented here, and genuine emotion - from Farrell in particular, mulling over the consequences of the botched hit which leads them to Bruges in the first place. If you don't mind so many cusswords, some seriously un-PC humour, and the odd moment or gruesome violence, then get out and catch this film as soon as you can. It's a cult hit in the making.

"Maybe that's what hell is... an entire eternity spent in fucking Bruges."

*How do you get that job counting movie swearwords? I could do that! Where do I apply?