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The Wittiest Crime Movie of the Decade Sits at 82% on RT and Almost No One Saw It
Martin McDonagh has become something of an odd critical darling. While his film directing dates back to 2008 and his work has developed a cult following, it’s his most recent movies — Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and The Banshees of Inisherin — that caught the attention of mass audiences and turned heads when the award season came around. The latter is even more impressive when you consider the films are chock-full of things that the Academy would presumably turn their noses at. To those who’ve been fans of his since his early work, he’s like the director equivalent of the cool indie band that went mainstream.
While his films have become celebrated, it’s his older ones that informed his style, and those are the ones that seem to get lost in the shuffle most consistently. Many might argue that his most underrated film is In Bruges, but the one that doesn’t get talked about enough is his sophomore outing, Seven Psychopaths. It has all the hallmarks and odd quirks that make McDonagh’s movies memorable, but it sidesteps the undertones that make the dramatic moments weigh a ton. In a bizarre turn, this might be his most accessible and crowd-pleasing film.
What Is Martin McDonagh’s Thriller ‘Seven Psycopaths About?
The story follows a screenwriter named Marty (Colin Farrell) who’s heavy on drinking but low on inspiration to write his screenplay, Seven Psychopaths. He rediscovers the inspiration when his off-kilter buddy Billy (Sam Rockwell) and his associate Hans (Christopher Walken) kidnap the dog of a bloody-thirsty gangster (Woody Harrelson). Now they’re on the run and have to live long enough to figure out how they’re going to finish the screenplay and survive the ordeal (in that order).
“Crowd-pleasing” may be an odd word to describe Seven Psychopaths, considering all of McDonagh’s movies have their fair share of alienating elements. However, while his other films have lofty themes and weighty subject matter, this one really is just about characters trying to write a screenplay. The threat of a criminal being out to kill them gets lost in the background because it’s not really the central focus when everything gets boiled down.
‘Seven Psychopaths’ Is a Bold Thriller in Several Key Ways
Seven Psychopaths is probably closest, structurally and stylistically, to The Big Lebowski. No one really learns anything or grows as characters; they’re just thrown together in weird predicaments to see what comes out and see how they react. When your main antagonist is introduced in an interrogation scene by walking in while eating a single strawberry, does that sound like a threat that you’re supposed to take seriously? Because the characters don’t. This is with the exception of Marty, who acts as the audience surrogate. Billy and Hans seem somewhere between inconvenienced and indifferent to the crime element that just got inserted into their lives.
The film does away with any attempt to make a statement about anything, and focuses instead on a meta commentary on itself and movie tropes. There are dramatic moments that are given time to breathe, but any moments that are made out to be deep or heady are often in the service of the screenplay that the characters themselves are writing, and are done away with when the characters acknowledge that the idea of including challenging subject matter in a movie called Seven Psychopaths is completely asinine.
Martin McDonough’s ‘Seven Psychopaths’ Is His Most Underrated Movie
The unspoken running gag of the movie is subverting tropes or doing away with them entirely. The movie starts with a Tarantino-esque cold open with two hit men (Michael Stuhlbarg and Michael Pitt) casually talking about whether John Dillinger got shot in the eyeball while waiting to put a hit out on someone. These characters could’ve been the leads of their own movie, but they end up being fodder for one of the real key players (and titular psychopaths) of the story, the Jack of Diamonds, who promptly kills them before the title card. It’s a good early indicator that nothing is going to go down the way you’d expect — which is pretty ironic that that’s the precedent it sets considering this is McDonagh’s only movie that you could say has a happy ending.
Seven Psychopaths is Martin McDonagh’s most laid-back film — offering his trademark clever dialogue and unruly characters — without the baggage of heavy plot points and deep thematic undertones. They’re here in bits and pieces, but they’re used as background dressing for the characters (specifically Hans) to give them more depth. That lack of dramatic weight may keep it from being considered one of his “great” films, but it helps make it easier to revisit as a hangout movie than, say, a heavy movie like In Bruges. If you want a Martin McDonagh movie that makes for a good casual viewing before Wild Horse Nine comes out in November, Seven Psychopaths is for you.
- Release Date
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October 12, 2012
- Runtime
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110 Minutes
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