Failures in Marketing: In Bruges

A warning for those who don't like spoilers ... there are SPOILERS below.

It's hard to imagine a duo of more affable and entertaining hit men than Jules and Vincent from Pulp Fiction. But that didn't stop critics from comparing to In Bruges guns-for-hire protagonists, Ray (Colin Farrell) and Ken (Brendan Gleeson). From the looks of the trailer and the DVD box, the film looked like a - to steal the quote from Karen Drubin of Elle Magazine that's on the DVD cover - "A Hilarious, Twisted Pleasure." I'm not sure why they decided to capitalize each word of that, but still, hit men? In a medieval town no one knows? Where one of them likes it and the other so doesn't? With midgets? Hold onto your sides!



Sarcasm aside, I was actually looking forward to seeing this kind of movie since I am a big fan of Pulp Fiction and films of that ilk. Plus, like any shut-in American, hearing Colin Farrell use his natural Irish accent made him all the more appealing, since we all know that Europeans who speak English all tend to sound better at it than we Americans do for some reason.

What I didn't expect was how dark the movie actually was. OK, in a movie about hit men, there's bound to be some some blood and violence with politically incorrect humor found therein. And there definitely is some of it In Bruges. But the film's actual primary dilemma, Ray's guilt over accidentally shooting a little boy dead while on the job, is the polar opposite of twisted entertainment. I mean, they actually show the boy with his head wound before he falls over. And Ray, at one point in the movie, almost commits suicide over his crushing guilt, pondering whether or not he's going to hell over his accidental homicide. It's a difficult and daring subject that the marketing seems to completely undermine.

But you know what is funny? The back of the DVD box's plot synopsis says that the two hit men, "soon find themselves in a life-and-death struggle of comic proportions against one very angry crime boss (Ralph Fiennes.)" Of comic proportions? It's not like there's a bunch of random midgets and fat people buggering up the shootout. The film has a small and intimate feeling - much like the setting - from the beginning to the end. And like most of the movie - it is primarily a heavy affair interlaced with some odd and yet oddly natural comedic elements. (Like Fiennes and Farrell's negotiation of how they'll exit the hotel without harming the pregnant owner caught in the crosshairs.) But even as the film ends, with the blood that's spilled, In Bruges keeps its head in the realistic consequences, both emotional and physical, of violence, as opposed to a gleeful romp through bullets and bodies.