IN BRUGES

(Focus Features)
Runtime: 107 min

If Fargo located in Europe it will be in Bruges, Belgium (pronounced "broozh") only without snow and naive Sheriff. Closer to Coen's Miller's Crossing, the dark comedy and characters resembles the crime world of Coen brothers.

This half-comic, half-serious account of two Irish hitmen who are sent to medieval city of Bruges to cool down after a job went bad kicks in with Colin Farrell as Ray and Brendan Gleeson as Ken. The reason why they were sent there explained by a bloody flashback. From Ken's voiceover it was also revealed that they were sent there to cool down by their boss, Harry (Ralph Fiennes), a character that only shows up in the last third of the film.

Verbally and behaviourly they have a love-hate relationship and the plot revolves on how they spent their day in the "fairytale" city with cobbled stone road, medieval village, canals and pristinely preserved Gothic architecture plus the peculiarities of their character. Ray also bumps in with some locals, like Chloe (Clemence Poesy), a charming drug dealer working on a film shoot, and dwarf/midget actor Jimmy (Jordan Prentice). Then the story moves in a fascinating way, full with surprising and bloody coincidences (they are on a small town anyway so they will bump with each other again). The good thing about this film is how it stir your emotion, you don't know whether you should laugh or cry as they both regret about a hit gone bad, but they didn't regret about the hit itself.