7 psicopatici

----no one else does--- one of my favorite things to tell the haters.

Trying not to give away any spoilers -- you have to watch this with an open mind looking to be entertained and not educated. Huge cast all the way to Tom Waites (who by the way, can do no wrong). The characters fit together and interact well. Although it's not the script of the decade, it is "playful". If I get into the characters and their roles I'll spill the beans. But I have to comment about Tom Waites (did I mention he can do no wrong?). He had an integral role in this film which I doubt many viewers really recognized and was flawlessly executed with the rhythm of an accomplished musician.

So take these two things from my review and relate them not just to this film but film in general - and even life; Don't take yourself so seriously - trust me, no one else does! Have no expectation of a film other than to be entertained (unless the film is a doc. of course).

Seven Psychopaths never quite reaches its full potential. This darkly comedic story has moments of genius, but it peaks early and plateaus for the rest of the movie. The actors look like they're having a good time, though -- Christopher Walken and Sam Rockwell play very well off each other. I guess I just expected more from this film.

Let's get the insane plot of Seven Psychopaths out of the way: Marty (Collin Farrell) is a struggling Irish screenwriter, who hopes to finish his screenplay for a film called "Seven Psychopaths," while battling a case of writer's block and author-indecisiveness. His best friend is Billy (Sam Rockwell), a boisterous dog-thief, who usually winds up dictating Marty's life rather than helping him along in tough times. Hans (Christopher Walken) is Billy's best friend and partner in crime when it comes to dog-snatching. After both Hans and Billy steal an unpredictable crime boss's (Woody Harrelson) shih-ztu, it becomes a violent, relentless cat-and-mouse chase to get the pup back, and in the meantime, we get lengthy monologues between characters about the production of "Seven Psychopaths" and how Marty's inspiration begins to bubble when he starts considering the barrage of real psychopaths in his own life.

There are several films that exist about the movie-making process and it is a very difficult genre to make effectively. Seven Psychopaths succeeds in balancing the art of characters and the art of plot coherency, and it doesn't cross the line of becoming too involved in the process and too concerned with "in" jokes that leave the audience lost. To put it simply; the actors look like they're having fun, but they make sure we are still amused and connected with the film.

Right off the bat, the first thing one can commend about this entire experience are the rich performances by actors of all different career heights. Collin Farrell plays a wonderful straight-laced man victim to idiocy and unhelpful circumstances, and is only made better by Sam Rockwell's character's shameless belligerence. Woody Harrelson, giving us one of his many diverse roles in recent years, has the rare ability of rustling up a fierce moment of seriousness and delivering a devilishly funny laugh in the same breath. And who could forget supporting-role king Christopher Walken, who continuously borders the line of self-parody here in a memorably sophisticated role? At times, Seven Psychopaths is a witty riot and at other times, it can be monotonous and lengthy. For starters, the film looks and feels like a Quentin Tarantino film blended with the likes of Guy Ritchie. Shots have a very slim sense of narrative cohesion and many, many times are we left bewildered at what we just watched. It's also apparent that the film has a meta, self-aware tone that can be pleasantly charming, and sometimes cloying and overly-cheeky. To simply my feelings; after many sequences was I trying to comprehend what was just given to me and how was I supposed to digest the experience all together.

I mentioned my feelings that the film seemed to drag and felt a little too long - specifically the final scene in the desert which is roughly twenty-five to thirty minutes. Perhaps if your interest is in cheeky comedies and self-aware humor, you won't mind at all. The film is certainly smarter and a lot brighter than some of the flyweight, narrow-minded comic exercises that have bestowed on the mainstream public in recent years. For once, it's refreshing to see a comedy pay close attention to its characters, its events, and its performance, never shortchanging anyone in the process.

NOTE: There's also something very, very different about the cinematography of this picture, different from any kind of visual atmosphere I have seen this year. The southern California area seems to be captured through a grungy, saturated lens with colors appearing bright, humid, and very warm. This easily makes Seven Psychopaths one of the most visually calm pictures of the year.

Starring: Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson, Christopher Walken, Tom Waits, Abbie Cornish, and Olga Kurylenko. Directed by: Martin McDonagh.

My friends and I went to the San Diego film festival this past week and were fortunate enough to get into an early screening of Seven Psychopaths, by Martin McDonagh. The film was very satisfying to me personally, weaving an original story around rich characters. Story is something that I take into great consideration when viewing a film as it has lost a foothold in many films today. In terms of presentation, I felt this movie to be a combination of Guy Richie, Quentin Tarantino, and The Coen Brothers. It's hilarious, dark, gripping, precise, quirky, demented, gory, and British. The frequent narration and character introduction of the movie gives it a constantly evolving lure and makes you feel like you're sitting by a camp fire listening to something unfold. Even though their is a thick layer of narration and Peckinpah darkness, it's fun as hell, with the acting a huge aspect of that; if you want to experience a great story, that discovers a point to the whole mess these characters undertake, and have a blast at the same time, then go see this awesome movie!

When I was driving to the theater, I was doubting my choice in Seven Psychopaths, because the trailer made it seem like so many films I'd seen before that looked edgy and wry, and showed so much promise in the previews yet fell short because of flat characters and muddled plots. This one, however, did not let me down.

I suggest that you see this film purely because it tries to do more with a movie than anything you've seen in a while, and it manages to actually succeeds on all levels, while dangerously romancing the clichés of toying with clichés, movies about writing movies, and gangsters with a soft side. Every time the story started to get even a little generic, wild cards came firing in from all sides.

The actors played their parts well, but Rockwell gave the best performance. I was impressed by Woody and Walken's abilities to shed their skins and get deeper into character than I've seen them be in years.

This is a writer's film--the subplots (really, borderline vignettes) about the various psychopaths that Marty encounters are well done, their back stories unfold at different paces, and their details that connect them to the central plot are creatively deployed, while the momentum of the film clearly hinges in the here and now and does not make the mistake of merely chaining together several subplots to produce one "dog" of a story.

I enjoyed almost everything about Seven Psychopaths. 10/10 to offset the 2 that someone without a brain will rate this.