Seven Psychopaths opens with the murder of two hitmen,
distracted from their vigilance by a meandering conversation about shooting
people in the eyeball. This scene immediately sets the tone for Martin
McDonagh's second feature as a director, with its self-consciously movie-sharp
dialogue, bursts of sudden violence, and recognisable faces filling even the
most expendable roles. McDonagh's debut film In Bruges had a great deal to
admire before it collapsed in a dismal third act, but the new film doesn't
build on that picture's promising aspects and instead we find McDonagh
indulging in his least appealing excesses. McDonagh is undoubtedly a very
clever man, but Seven Psychopaths appears to be about nothing more than its own
cleverness.
Apparently written as a means of dealing with his own
creative blockage, Seven Psychopaths is the story of a Hollywood-based Irish screenwriter
named Marty (Colin Farrell), who is struggling with his latest project. He has
already come up with a promising title – Seven Psychopaths – and he has a few
scraps of ideas, but these ideas are leading him nowhere. Marty's best friend
Billy, a reckless motormouth played with energetic relish by Sam Rockwell, jabbers
away constantly in his ear, regaling the writer with tall tales and urban myths
that he hopes will earn him a co-writer credit, and we see some of these stories in
brief vignettes. A Viet Cong guerrilla dressed as a Catholic priest fraternises
with an American prostitute; a Quaker seeks vengeance against the man who
murdered his daughter. Later, a newspaper advert calling for psychopaths to
share their own stories turns up Tom Waits, who recounts his days as a serial killer seeking out and murdering other psychopaths. How on earth is Marty –
or McDonagh – supposed to fit all of this into his script?
Wayward and overstuffed, Seven Psychopaths never settles
into any kind of rhythm or finds a satisfying narrative path. The movie is
constantly interrupting and contradicting itself, and the impact of every event
is undermined by a thick coating of irony. The film partially resembles Charlie Kaufman's
Adaptation in its construction, deliberately torpedoing its own narrative
structure to let one of its characters take command of the screenplay. As
Rockwell's Billy grabs hold of Seven Psychopaths the film spirals out of
control, but there's a sense that McDonagh wants to have it both ways with his
critique of Hollywood storytelling structure, and this is never more evident
than in the way the film's female characters are treated. Gabourey Sidibe,
Abbie Cornish and Olga Kurylenko deserve better than the cheap roles afforded
to them here (Kurylenko's screen time is laughably truncated despite her
prominence on the poster); and while McDonagh makes this part of the big joke,
having characters criticise Marty's ability to write women, it's a joke that
leaves a nasty aftertaste.
Too much of Seven Psychopaths is like that. McDonagh is a gifted
writer and with this cast spouting his dialogue the film undeniably has its
amusing moments, but the picture is too cruel, contrived and soulless to be
really funny. Whereas the narrative transitions in Adaptation felt organic and
thematically sound, the road Seven Psychopaths ultimately goes down feels
forced, and there's nothing like the emotional heft that Kaufman's script
created between the two protagonists. The only resonance here comes from
Christopher Walken, whose distinctive delivery feels so right for McDonagh, and
whose lived-in performance as a dognapper with a shady past comes closest to
providing Seven Psychopaths with its one character who feels real. The best
scene in the film is one of its quietest, a hospital face-off between Walken
and Woody Harrelson's agitated gangster, and the quality of such small moments
makes me despair that so much talent and potential has been wasted on this
empty and nasty shaggy-dog story.
