In Bruges: Remembering One of the Best Movies of the Last 20 years

Ah, Christmas! While the notion of peace of earth and goodwill towards men makes this the warmest time of the year, Christmas isn’t always so cozy on the silver screen. Many of our favourite action flicks use the holidays as a backdrop, with some of them using the yuletide setting to add an extra layer of hopelessness to the proceedings – I’m looking at you, First Blood. Another Blue Christmas classic is director Martin McDonagh’s first feature-length film, In Bruges, a darkly comic character study of two hitmen on the run who set up shop in a titular quaint city in Belgium. The two hitmen are beautifully played by Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, whose pairing was so potent that McDonagh retimed them 14 years later for The Banshees of Inisherin.

In this one, Colin Farrell plays a conscience-stricken young hitman named Ray, who’s suicidal after accidentally killing a child in a hit gone wrong. And oh yeah, if he wasn’t a dark enough character, he also killed a priest during confession for good measure – and that one wasn’t an accident. He’s being watched over by Brendan Gleeson’s Ken, a veteran contract killer who, unbeknownst to Ray, is supposed to execute Ray once ordered by their boss, the vicious crime boss, Harry, played by the excellent Ralph Fiennes. Harry is an interesting sort of guy. While a vicious boss, he’s also a somewhat loving family man. He wants Ken to delay killing Ray because he wants the young man to enjoy a few days of peace. Harry remembers visiting Bruges, a lovely Christmas village, as a child. 

In Bruges was badly handled by Focus Features when they put it out in 2008. Despite the Christmas setting and the high-profile cast, the movie wasn’t released in time for awards consideration in 2007 and was put out in theatres in February of 2008. While well-received critically, it was only a modest box office success and almost wholly ignored by the academy at the end of the year, only earning a Best Original Screenplay nomination. The incredible cast was overlooked, but In Bruges has endured more than more high-profile films that year. 

Typically, In Bruges isn’t considered a Christmas movie despite the setting, as the holiday is irrelevant to the plot. Yet, one could make the case that it’s more of thematically. Christmas movie is more than most classics, as it’s about redemption, friendship, peace on Earth, and Goodwill towards men. It was marketed as a Guy Ritchie-style crime thriller, but it’s anything but. It’s a black comedy, with Farrell’s young hotshot Ray at odds with the older, wiser Ken, but they quickly warm up to each other, bonding over how they both think Bruges is rather overwhelmingly sweet. There are some genuinely hilarious moments here, including Gleeson and Farrell’s coke-driven partying with a little person, memorably played by Jordan Prentice, who turns out to be an unhinged racist. It’s in this scene that the layers of the two hitmen begin to get peeled away, with Ken revealed as a grieving widower whose late, beloved wife was black. Ray and Ken have each other’s backs and become good friends, with Ken unthinkably having a massive crisis of conscience over his order to kill Ray, who is planning to kill himself anyway out of shame. Against all odds, Ken becomes his guardian angel, who, along with a Belgian drug dealer played by Clemence Poésy, helps convince him that life is worth living. This is like the It’s a Wonderful Life of hitman movies.

Everything about this movie is pitch-perfect, with Farrell, Gleeson and Fiennes all equal in their brilliance here. Each brings a different energy to the film, with Farrell bringing pathos, Gleeson bringing maturity, and Fiennes, manic energy. The incredibly profane dialogue is almost poetic, with Fiennes unleashed here in a way that likely changed his career to a large degree. He was no longer the British leading man he was in the nineties and early 2000s, but instead became a frequently hilarious character actor. One imagines Wes Anderson must have seen In Bruges, with it playing a significant role in his casting in The Grand Budapest Hotel. The movie also solidified Farrell’s reputation as a proper actor, marking the end of his young movie star phase after a few high-profile flops. After In Bruges, his stature as an incredibly versatile actor was well-earned. It also gave Brendan Gleeson a much-deserved leading role. During this period, Gleeson frequently appeared in American films, with either him or Brian Cox hilariously present in almost all big movies between 2000 and 2010. Gleeson got to be the lead here and has become a favourite of Martin McDonagh and his equally talented brother, John Michael, who also used him to great effect as a leading man in The Guard and Cavalry. 

So, if you haven’t seen In Bruges in a while and are looking for something a little less well-worn than some other Christmas classics, throw this one on. You might not remember just how moving of a movie it is despite the non-stop F-bombs and C-words. Has any movie this filthy ever been so wholesome and pure?