Seven Psychopaths

Martin (Colin Farrell) is a Hollywood screenwriter struggling with writer's block, with a beautiful girlfriend (Abbie Cornish) that he kind of hates. Billy (Sam Rockwell) is Martin's best friend who runs a dog-kidnapping scheme. Hans (Christopher Walken) is Billy's partner-in-crime, but is also a devout Christian. Charlie (Woody Harrelson) is a local psychopathic gangster, who has just had his much-loved dog kidnapped. You can probably already tell that these interesting, quirky characters' paths are going to cross over the course of Seven Psychopaths, and it won't all end with a friendly hand-shake.

Extremely violent, shockingly crass and a lot of fun, Martin McDonagh's follow up to In Bruges is lacking his first movie's sense of depth or relatability. Whereas with In Bruges you genuinely wanted for Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson's characters to survive, here it's difficult to care because there doesn't seem to be a single decent person in the bunch. But that's not to say they aren't likeable, with McDonagh getting some fantastic performances out of his entire cast, with particular mention going to Sam Rockwell for his loveable lunatic, and Christopher Walken who seems to be doing a Christopher Walken impression. Seven Psychopaths also boasts a stellar supporting cast (Michael Pitt, Tom Waits, Abbie Cornish, Gabourey Sibide, Harry Dean Stanton), all of whom bring their A-game.

The only person who didn't bring their A-game here is McDonagh himself, as his directing style this time round smacks of Guy Richie's early-00's gangster films, and his writing style is a mish-mash of Tarantino wordplay and Charlie Kauffman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) levels of self-reference (check out Colin Farrell's character's name, for starters). There's both too much going on at one time, but not enough to keep it all together, and the entire thing ends up being a lot less than the sum of its parts.

Having said that, the acting was great, the soundtrack was awesome, some of the individual scenes were fantastic, and there are quite a few laugh out loud moments. But a week after seeing it, you'll probably have forgotten everything about it.