Back during the 90s, in the wake of such movies as Reservoir Dogs and Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels, there were a rash of crime movies that saw what Quentin Tarrantino and Guy Richie had achieved out of nowhere, and promptly tried to follow suit. To be fair, not many of these glib, violent and darkly quirky thrillers were particularly that memorable – but then that’s because all of them weren’t scripted or directed by Martin McDonagh.
In case you’ve somehow managed to let the biting, Irish wit of McDonagh pass you by, he made his directorial debut with the darkly ludicrous In Bruges that saw Colin Farrell fight a little person and Brendon Gleeson memorably call Ralph Fiennes’ entire family the c-word. McDonagh eventually went to go on to deliver even darker material with the excellent Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri – but sitting somewhere in the middle was his sophomore effort, Seven Psychopaths, a meta-oddity that mixed murderers, boozy writers and a fair bit of dog-napping.
Marty Faranan is a writer based in Los Angeles who, when he isn’t struggling with his next screenplay (also entitled Seven Psychopaths), is grossly increasing his blood alcohol levels due to a drinking habit that’s gotten way out of hand. While his girlfriend vehemently disapproves, Marty’s sole support is his erratic, wannabe actor friend, Billy Bickle, who also runs a dog-napping side hustle with the devoutly religious Hans Kieslowski, as they return the dogs they steal in order to claim sizable rewards. But while Hans uses the money to help pay for his wife’s cancer treatment, all Billy really wants to do is to work with Marty on his screenplay, but is too self conscious to ask.
Trying to compile psychopath stories from various sources for the script, Marty gathers a tale about a vengence-seeking Quaker (which he’s drunkly forgotten that Billy actually told him), a Vietnamese priest unable to forget the war, a couple who went around murdering murderers and the current news story of The Jack Of Diamonds Killer who has been going around executing mafia guys.
However, things start to get somewhat volatile when Billy decides to steal the beloved Shih Tzu that belongs to tyrannical gangster, Charlie Costello, and while he gets his men to go on a tear trying to find it, matters soon get pretty strange and very bloody. It doesn’t take long for Costello’s goons to narrow down what happened, but after a near-death experience that’s diffused with copious bullets from the Jack Of Diamonds Killer, Marty, Billy and Hans decide to flee to the desert and hide out until the heat blows over. But after meaningful debates, disturbing revelations and a bit of peyote, Marty starts to realise that his devoted friend may actually be the greatest psychopath of them all.
For a film that’s essentially, at its core, yet another deeply eccentric crime caper, Seven Psychopaths, actually has quite a lot to say for itself. Acting as both a loving homage and a dismissive take-down of massively convoluted, over-written, dark comedy thrillers, McDonagh deconstructs such elements as affable killers, overblown crime bosses, glib murders and multiple sub-plots and characters that may or may not actually go anywhere. The director offers up a sprawling, meta-glipse of the writing process as the main character (an Irish screenwriter tellingly also named Martin) seems to echo his journey through crafting the very movie we may be watching, but before you recoil at the idea that McDonagh has tumbled into some sort metaphysical sink hole like Guy Ritchie’s Revolver, Seven Psychopaths’ take on pacifism meets violent black comedy actually proves to be pretty gripping and very funny.
Maybe McDonagh’s balance on the meta tightrope isn’t quite as solid as you’d expected from the man who gave us In Bruges’ comedic existential angst. Still, the cast is as strong as hell, with Colin Farrell once again setting those distinctive eyebrows of his to “sad” as a writer struggling both with inspiration and large helpings of liquor (“One: You’re a writer. Two: You’re from Ireland. It’s part of your heritage. You’re fucked!”). But interestingly, it seems that McDonagh is just as eager to take himself to task just as much as the genre he’s playing in as he constantly has Martin berated by people picking holes in the way he writes women, or how his alcoholism is effecting his work. In a counterpoint to Farrell’s constantly pained expression, we also have Sam Rockwell once again displaying his unique ability to deliver unhinged, ranting scumbags that are also bewilderingly likable. Balancing out the two, we also get (for no extra charge) Christopher Walken as a thoughtful pacifist with a tragic and ghastly past, Woody Harrelson as a dog-loving, trigger-tempered gangster and numerous, ironic close-ups of one of the cutest little puppers you’ve ever fucking seen. But even on top of all this, many brief roles are memorably taken up by such faces as Olga Kurylenko, Michael Stuhlbarg, Harry Dean Stanton and a bunny stroking Tom Waits, who show up only to mostly suffer nasty and sudden demises.
Anyone expecting more of a straight-forward, comedy/gangster flick may be thrown by a lot of self referential digs that the script throws in. Billy angrily lobbies against Marty about wanting to dispense with a final act shoot out in favour of having his characters instead have existential conversations in the desert only for McDonagh to do the exact same thing. Later still, he amusingly picks apart absurdly neat, Hollywood conventions, such as a final act shootout conveniently clearing up every plot thread and willfully going against expectations whenever he can.
Of course, while some may be repeatedly thrown by such counterintuitive twists, they’ll still surely embrace that acerbic sense of humor that cements McDonagh ear for cracking dialogue. Even better, he’s got people like Walken, Harrelson and Rockwell delivering them – but while Seven Psychopaths proves to be a brutal, good time, it’s missing some of that small-scale perfection that came with the director’s earlier In Bruges, the seething, caustic rage that powered Three Billboards, or the dark absurdist drama of The Banshees Of Inisherin. Still, if your “weakest” movie still delivers Tom Waits telling a story about hunting killers with the love of his life while stroking a bunny, Colin Farrell continuing to make looking bewildered a comedic artform, or one of the best uses of a Harry Dean Stanton cameo, your career must be in great, fucking shape.
While Seven Psychopaths occasionally stumbles over its many tangled threads, there’s a sense that that’s exactly what Martin McDonagh wants to achieve with a movie that simultaneously professes an admiration for the kooky crime film while constantly putting a cynical boot into its ribs. Come for Rockwell’s rants, Farrell’s facial expressions and Walken’s line delivery – stay for the razor sharp dialogue, unpredictable twists and the cutest damn dog you’ve ever seen.
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