Seven Psychopaths (***)

I am pretty sure of this: Like the alcoholic and aspiring screenwriter played by Colin Farrell, Martin McDonagh, the writer-director of this comedy, came up with the title first. The fictional screenwriter has only a couple of ideas, like one about a Buddhist psychopath, but he also has the advantage of a helpfully nutty friend (Sam Rockwell) and some real-life events to inspire him. Whereas McDonagh, I think, largely made all this stuff up, which shows he has quite an imagination, but also that much of what passes here strains credulity.

As with In Bruges, McDonagh’s previous effort, or even more so, I felt too aware of the attempts at cleverness, though possibly I laughed more anyway. The Ferrell character dreams of creating a movie about psychopaths that’s nonetheless “life-affirming,” and so does McDonagh, I imagine, even though he’s mostly trying to be funny. The story largely revolves around a dognapping ring. Rockwell’s character is caught up in it, and so is another one played by Christopher Walken. Their dognappers’ victims include one of the psychopaths, played by Woody Harrelson. Harrelson’s character doesn’t hestitate to prey on the weak, or to pretend to kill someone just for a gag, but his quest is the return of his beloved dog, Bonnie, for whom his heart melts. So there’s the life-affirming part.

McDonagh does some of the same mixing of creative plotting, oddball characters, and arch dialogue that Quentin Tarantino employs with much less visible patchwork. Nonetheless, it would be difficult to have such colorful actors as Harrelson, Rockwell, and Walken in the same movie and have it be forgettable, or humorless. And, in fact, McDonagh meets his own challenge by coming up with an original conclusion, or a couple of them, actually, that’s dramatically satisfying, though “life-affirming” would be stretching things.

IMDb link

viewed 10/4/12 7:30 at Rave University City and reviewed 10/5-12/12