In Bruges

The impossibly picturesque town of Bruges ("it's in Belgium!") becomes the unlikely purgatory for two hit men on the run in Irish playwright Martin McDonagh's fiendishly entertaining debut feature.

After a badly botched assassination, Ray (Colin Farrell) and Ken (Brendan Gleeson) are sent to the home of swans, canals, and medieval spires. They're supposed to lie low while they await further orders from their boss Harry (Ralph Fiennes). Of course, it doesn't take long before Ray, bored with sightseeing, gets mixed up with a bizarre cast of locals, including the petulant ticket taker at the clock tower, a mysterious beauty (Clémence Poésy), and a hard-partying midget (Jordan Prentice).

As a director, McDonagh's visual sense may still be developing, but his narrative flexibility has always been astounding. Since his earliest plays (The Beauty Queen of Leenane, The Cripple of Inishmaan), violence has always been central to his brand of black comedy, in which the Irish countryside struggles to conceal a history rife with bloody murder. Homicidal treachery and backstabbing are everywhere, and McDonagh knows how to exploit them for humor as well as horror. In A Skull in Connemara, a scene in which two men grind up a heap of bones with mallets builds to a hysterically funny climax -- even though you can't forget that the skulls being crushed are human.

The same expert blending of morbid jokes with reminders of the real consequences of violence is at work here. McDonagh's outrageously filthy-mouthed rapid-fire dialogue can't obscure the fact that the Ray and Ken's reason for hiding out in feckin' Bruges isn't funny at all. In Bruges keeps constantly modulating moods, from broad fish-out-of-water comedy to revenge thriller, from soul-searching morality tale to the resolution's near-Boschian horror, which plays like a twisted Belgian version of Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now.

It's quite an accomplishment that it all adds up to a satisfying whole; you'd be hard pressed to find a more enjoyable illustration of the old chestnut by McDonagh's fellow countryman George Bernard Shaw: "Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh."

In Bruges (2008): Focus Features, 1 hr. 41 min.