Regarding "Psychopaths"

"Seven Psychopaths" looks so good on paper. A struggling screenwriter named Marty (Colin Farrell), is trying to write a screenplay based only on a title, "Seven Psychopaths." However, he's distracted by the schemes of his pal Billy (Sam Rockwell), who kidnaps dogs to return them for the reward money. Billy's partner in dognapping is Hans (Christopher Walken), whose wife Myra (Linda Bright Clay) is in the hospital for cancer treatments. One day Billy and Hans grab the wrong dog, a little Shih Tzu named Bonny who belongs to the gangster Charlie Costello (Woody Harrelson). Other characters in the mix include a mysterious "Jack of Diamonds" killer who targets members of organized crime, Costello's lovely girlfriend Angela (Olga Kurylenko), a gentleman named Zachariah (Tom Waits), who used to be one half of a Bonnie-and-Clyde serial killer team, and a Vietnamese soldier (Long Nguyen) out for revenge.

"Psychopaths" is the brain child of Irish writer and director Martin McDonagh, who was also responsible for "In Bruges." I’ve been a fan of his for a long time, and I can see what he was going for here. This is a dark, dark satire of the action movie genre with a lot of self-referential, self-critical meta humor, that also takes a genuine stab at addressing several different forms and expressions and treatments of violence. McDonagh's script is frequently clever, has a wonderful puzzle-box structure, and is occasionally very touching. However, it's also wildly inconsistent, has too much going on, and it's hard to feel any sympathy for a pair of lead characters who spend so much time psychoanalyzing themselves through their screenplay, but feel like hastily thrown-together constructs, made of convenient tropes. I had a lot of trouble with Sam Rockwell's Billy, whose arc goes through a bunch of twisted convolutions that just didn't hold together. I could buy a lot of the wild coincidences and moments of action movie logic that the story depends on, but the twists involving Billy weren't properly set up and come off as pretty contrived.

Then again, you could argue that this is the point. "Seven Psychopath" presents itself as a deliberate critique on all the common fallacies of action movies, from the over-the-top badass combatants to the awful female characters (Abbie Cornish briefly appears as Marty's girlfriend) to increasingly outlandish confrontations. McDonagh doesn't push too far, saving the most ridiculous final standoff scenario for a proposed ending to the screenplay that Billy breathlessly describes to Marty with lots of kablooey sound effects. Then again, maybe the movie would have worked a bit better if he had. "Seven Psychopath" never gets as deliriously dark and biting as it could, because McDonagh does want you to care about the characters to some extent, and to consider his take on screen violence with some seriousness. He takes great pains to make sure that some of the deaths have real emotional impact, and shows that the act of killing can have unforeseen consequences. He also presents some thoughtful examples of positive violence to contrast with the usual senseless, negative variety. Some of this works to great effect. Some of it doesn't.

The film is at its best when taken scene by scene, piece by piece. There are some great performances here, particularly from Woody Harrelson and Christopher Walken, who gets one of the few really multilayered, memorable parts. Here is an oddball elderly man who has had a rough past, but dearly loves his ailing wife and has had time to reflect on the nature of his misdeeds. His attitude toward violence is the most informed one, and Walken is wonderful in the role, walking that thin line between kookiness and enlightenment. Harrelson's emotional mobster is broader, but he summons such wonderful humor and menace. Some of the film's best scenes involve his tense face-offs with other characters. Then there's Tom Waits, who shows up with a rabbit in his arms and a story to tell. He doesn't seem to be operating quite in the same universe as anyone else, but he makes such an impression that I wished we could have been watching a movie set in whatever universe his character was inhabiting.

There is a lot to get out of "Seven Psychopaths." Too much, maybe. Ultimately, I think McDonagh bit off a little more than he could chew. The ideas all have a lot of potential, but the execution needs work. There were tonal shifts and big reveals and stories within stories that I could see being very effective if they were handled right. McDonagh's not quite at the level to make something this complicated work the way he wants it to. There were a couple of big moments that fell completely flat for me, and a couple of obvious bits of symbolism and character parallels that didn't add up to much of anything. I really enjoy McDonagh as a writer, but his screenplays have been very hit-or-miss so far. And as a director, I think he needs to work a little harder.
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