Seven Psychopaths

MOVIE #1,104 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 08.11.23 I’ve now seen all four of the great Irish director Martin McDonagh’s films made to date (in addition to the excellent short, Six Shooter). Here is how I would rank them. (It was tough. They’re all a solid 9/10 or better. I’m a big fan, it turns out.) The film is constantly subverting the audience’s expectations at every turn and then commenting on those subversions as they pertain to the entire meta “you are watching a movie about the writing of a movie” experience, which is at once obvious but also thrillingly original. It’s also just damn funny. It’s not quite Hitler getting gunned down, but the damn Zodiac killer gets burnt alive in this alternate reality. Having seen all his movies now I can say there aren’t many filmmakers with a higher batting average than McDonagh.

To me, even though his movies look nice and are visually interesting, his main strength is his writing. I mentioned this on the podcast reviews of his other movies, but he’s who Tarantino wishes he was. His knack for concocting wild dialogue that is both funny and feels natural is uncanny. I recently tried to rewatch Pulp Fiction and was horribly put-off by the Travolta/Jackson conversation. It’s probably unfair to explicitly pit the two against one another but the comparison seems apt given that they’re contemporaries and their shared proclivity for crime-centric stories. (I also feel like Q.T. reigned in his tryhard misgivings post Jackie Brown but this is a Martin McDonagh post, not a Tarantino one so I’ll shut up about it.)

In short, go watch his movies. They’re all good!

---

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ MOVIE #1,103 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,105 ⫸

---

Seven Psychopaths is a 2012 satirical crime comedy-drama film directed, written, and co-produced by Martin McDonagh and starring Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson, and Christopher Walken, with Tom Waits, Abbie Cornish, Olga Kurylenko, and Željko Ivanek in supporting roles. The film marks the second collaboration among McDonagh, Farrell, and Ivanek, following the director's In Bruges (2008). It is a co-production of the United States and the United Kingdom. It was released on September 7, 2012.