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Kim Voynar

By Kim Voynar Voynar@moviecitynews.com

TIFF12 Review: Seven Psychopaths

While Martin McDonagh’s highly anticipated Seven Psychopaths, starring an impressive cast including Sam Rockwell, Colin Farrell and Christopher Walken, and Woody Harrelson, lacks somewhat the depth of character that defined McDonagh’s 2008 standout In Bruges, it’s a mostly fun and entertaining romp through the lighter side of darkness — or at least, dark comedy.

So here’s what we have here, for the curious: Marty (Farrell) is a hapless screenwriter who can’t seem to get beyond the title of the story he wants to write, “Seven Psychopaths.” Like a great many would-be screenwriters living in LA, he therefore spends a great deal of time both drinking alcohol and talking about his screenplay, as if by merely talking about it and throwing enough booze into the mix he can will it into existence. Which, interestingly enough, is kind of what happens, as his actor buddy Billy (Rockwell) latches onto the idea and starts pitching various iterations of psychopath characters as potential fodder for Marty’s script, which Billy would very much like to co-write. Unfortunately for Marty, his pipe dream of writing about crazy guys gets a bullet-injected boost of reality when Billy and his sad-sack pal Hans (Walken), who con extra cash by stealing prized pups and then returning them to their owners for reward money, inadvertently steal Bonnie, the beloved Shih Tzu of Charlie (Harrelson), a local gangster kingpin who gets all misty over his pooch, but doesn’t flinch on putting a bullet or two in the brain of a human being. Chaos, hilarity, and lots of guns and killing ensues.

And for the most part, as aforesaid, it is actually a pretty fun ride. I sometimes forget just how much I like Farrell as an actor in between his good films (we’ll just ignore the existence of that Total Recall remake, shall we?). He has this way of looking right through the camera as if he can see you on the other side, and he conveys the wistful intellect of Marty about as well as that character could have been portrayed, particularly in the film’s second half, when the shit really starts to hit the fan and Marty’s hysterically trying to sort out just what it all means. Harrelson’s solid, playing up the crazy in Charlie, though he’s hindered somewhat by the one-dimensionality of Charlie having seemingly no moral compass or motivation save his love for his dog. I get that this is supposed to amplify Charlie, in that it’s funny to have this bad-ass gangster who kills people without thought, remorse, or even much in the way of a reason, going all sappy over a dog. Nonetheless, a little more sense of purpose in what drives Charlie beyond that would have made him feel more character and less caricature.

Walken, of course, would have to try really hard to be bad in anything, and he’s given the most morally complex character to work with in Hans, though I can’t divulge much about why he’s complex without giving away plot details that I don’t want to reveal. But he gets some fantastic lines, which he delivers as only Christopher Walken could deliver them. Could any other actor quietly deliver the line, “It’s a cravat.” and have it mean so much more than that, in quite the same way? I think not. In Walken’s capable hands, the dignified, quiet, complicated and tragic Hans was my favorite character in the film.

But let’s talk about Sam Rockwell for a minute, shall we? As Billy, he’s tasked with the character who drives the entire story, and he is just terrific in this film. He’s always had the potential for terrific, and he came closest to that adjective, for me, in 2009’s Moon, but here he’s given a character he can really run with, and man, does he. Eccentric and off-center, yet consistently guided by his own set of moral values, however skewed they may be to a normal person, Rockwell not only holds his own with Walken, Farrell and Harrelson, but sets a bar for everyone else to reach as well. That, my friends, is saying something.

For all that I liked about it, though, Seven Psychopaths isn’t without its problematic issues. The script, for the most part, feels very much incepted in concept and fleshed out in plot without equal weight given to who these characters are, trusting it to the actors to bring them to life. And while they’re all bigger than life in their performances, and create characters who largely entertain, there are times when the plot drags along and you’re waiting for the next interesting thing to happen. More troublesome, for me, are the female characters. Linda Bright Clay gets the best of them as Myra, Hans’ cancer-stricken wife who’s more complicated than she seems at first glance, but the rest of the female characters serve little purpose at all; Abbie Cornish in particular is pretty much wasted here, which is shame, because McDonagh certainly could have made the choice to make that character more integral to the overall plot than he does. Gabourey Sidibe gets lost in the shuffle also, given little to do besides blubber and be the butt of fat jokes. Awesome. I count three female names among the producer credits for this film; surely one or two of them could have suggested to McDonagh that his female characters could be better drawn and developed.

And overall, while the dialog is mostly sharp and snappy (and certainly well-delivered), where In Bruges felt fresh and new and surprising, Seven Psychopaths feels like the love-child of Quentin Tarantino (in plot and pacing) and Wes Anderson (in look and feel, and a bit in the quirkiness), starting with the opening scene of two gangsters bantering wittily while awaiting their target and carrying through to the film’s final showdown in the desert. Granted, the way that scene ends surprises and sets up a crucial plot point, but still.

Perhaps it’s not surprising, given that production design is by David Wasco, who’s handled production design for both Tarantino and Anderson. I’m not saying it’s not well-thought, because it is — I could probably go back and watch the film again more closely and pick up on lots of little nuggets thoughtfully placed among the various design elements. And I’m not saying that it doesn’t look great, because it does. But it also looks a bit too much like something we’ve seen before, because we have. The cinematograhpy, by Ben Davis (Layer Cake, Kick-Ass) is lovely, and editing by Lisa Gunn (Hey, a chick editor! Bonus points for that!) is mostly solid. Score is by Carter Burwell, who in addition to In Bruges, has composed many of my favorite scores in recent years, including the scores for No Country for Old Men and True Grit, and his work is solid and reliable here, setting the wry and quirky tone without generally being too overbearing.

Overall, Seven Psychopaths is a mostly fun dip into the not-too-deep end of dark comedy; where it fails to stimulate the intellect or satisfy with depth of character, it does, for the most part, succeed as an audience-pleasing romp.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon