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Ken (Brendan Gleeson) and Ray (Colin Farrell) are hit men. Their boss, Harry (Ralph Fiennes), instructs them to travel to Bruges and await further instructions while hiding out in the medieval town, since Ray has made a terrible, life-changing mistake on the job. "In Bruges" is listed virtually everywhere as "comedy", but a slightly-more-than-superficial viewer might have something to say about that. In fact, the film is actually a complex fresco of slapstick comedy, intense mob drama, Gothic phantasmagoria and, to top it all off, grotesque extravaganza. What makes this film so unique and superb is an (apparently) unlikely combination of genres in one unfathomable, original, hilarious and outrageous script, wrongfully devoid of an Oscar. Most of the time you forget that Ken and Ray are Irish mobsters rather accidental tourists and Farrell plus Gleeson plus Fiennes equals comedic virtuosity. Colin Farrell graces us with the best performance of his entire career, full of immeasurable depth and versatility, while Brendan Gleeson watches over him with paternal warmth and veteran excellence. Ralph Fiennes rounds out the main cast as a foul-mouthed, shamefully funny and overly memorable mob-boss, thus proving his exquisite range as an actor. There is one member of the cast who is not mentioned as such, but nevertheless acquires fundamental importance: that is, of course, the town of Bruges, exuding its ancient history from every inch of the screen and wrapped in Eigil Bryld's marvellous cinematography, which gives it an aura of mysticism and mystery seldom achieved in films. Carter Burwell's full-bodied and profound score underlines the dramatic aspects of the story, which crawl almost unnoticed during the first part of the film only to explode with violent and bloody vigour in the second one and culminate into a suspenseful finale. Overall, this subtle operation is not a dish for the weak-hearted or the intellectually obtuse, as it conjures up an emotional journey which requires full involvement, suspension of disbelief and, most importantly, intellectual openness, a trait rarely found in contemporary audiences.

Young Jamal, born and raised in the slums of Mumbai, is one question away from winning the top prize at "Who wants to be a millionaire?", but how did he get that far? The first time I saw a Danny Boyle film, "Trainspotting" to be precise, I felt awful, as if the crude depiction of Scottish poverty had opened a dark abyss in my soul. I tried again with "A life less ordinary", which the critics hated and I absolutely loved, mainly because of the eye-opening "irony gone wild" experience it was for me in regard to the famous saying "men are from Mars, women are from Venus". Excess, a typically Boylian trait, is also the essential premise of "Slumdog Millionaire", although it takes on a very different meaning, as opposed to Boyle's earlier work. In the slums of Mumbai excess is nothing if not crude reality itself : the filth, the hollowing despair and the merciless violence which reign over the people who are trapped in that life all add up to this disturbingly realistic portrait which Anthony Dod Mantle's brilliant photography empathizes with. However, you might feel, at this point, that I'm describing a very well-made documentary and let me tell you immediately that is not so. A story like this one needed to fly by letting imagination run wild with its creative force and only a director prone to excess by definition and, at the same time, morbidly attracted to the darkest depths of civilization could pull off the task at hand. Luckily, Danny Boyle was the perfect man for the job and the final result is, in my opinion, a masterpiece in the contemporary panorama of the art of cinema. A special mention goes out to Chris Dickens's nail-biting editing and to A.R. Nahman's score, literally capable of controlling the blood flow of any human being subject to its rhythm. On the other hand, Simon Beaufoy's script gets rid of any form of rhetoric, seeps through that particular kind of humour which allows the audience to laugh in the very midst of tragedy, winks at Bollywood near the end, speaks through the eyes of a child in the first part and constructs a sturdy family drama with an epic feel to it in the middle. The actors, virtually unknown on our side of the world, are excellent and the crown jewel is the young Dev Patel, who plays the main character Jamal, whose intensity manages to get across what an interminable number of pages of monologuing could not. While the end titles rolled I was flustered and overjoyed, red with excitement and dancing to the music against my rational self and my suggestion to all of you, before I bring about my final thoughts on this film, is to go and watch this in a cinema (or movie theatre, whatever they call it these days) in order to get the full experience of this mind-blowing tale. Another major player in the current award season is "The curious case of Benjamin Button" and if you catch both films I encourage you to reflect upon the concept of "epic", they stand for two diametrically opposite ideas of what such a concept should mean. I do not presume to lend you golden drops from the tree of wisdom, but I would still like to base my final comment on this aspect. It seems clear to me that this film has an epic feel to it, since it's ultimately a long and star-crossed love story, transcending the immense suffering of he who treads the path to get "from slums to success", in the words of histrionic and ambiguous TV show host Prem Kumar and ascending to the role of constant guiding light in every heroic gesture, unconventionally speaking, made by Jamal.