Rarely has hyper-violence been so deadpan funny. Seven Psychopaths has macabre moments that squeeze chortles of laughter out of you. Colin Farrell is the non-psychopath writer. The rest of the fun is guessing if members of the cast are or are not. The primary stars are Christopher Walken, Sam Rockwell and Woody Harrelson. Then there are surprise entrances by… let’s just say it is an odd cast. One of them is a Buddhist psychopath. This Martin McDonagh (“In Bruges”) effort is high-intellect absurdism, kind of like what “The Big Lebowski” achieved. Not as great or consistent a result, but quite an amusing effort.
Tangents. The movie has a lot of them. I could tell you about the Quaker psychopath, but it’s better if you just discover on your own. Another one pops up petting rabbits, and part of the movie’s quirkiness is going flashback to the scenes as to why he adopted a rabbit. The movie has such ingenious absurdity that it goes back to the time of the Zodiac killer. Back to the present, did Marty (Farrell’s character) really get drunk and call his girlfriend an a**hole?
Marty is a writer that hates the hyper-violence in action pictures, and he really is trying to write a script about several meditative psychopaths. But he gets tripped up in his real life. Rockwell, as the best bud, puts an ad in the paper inviting would-be psychopaths to the house. This is great background research for his friend, he thinks. Meanwhile, Charlie’s (Harrelson) Shih Tzu has gone missing, and is on the hunt for dognapper Hans (Walken). Retired from regular jobs, Hans is a vocational dognapper (he collects reward money). The case of mistaken identities also ensues.
The movie goes on for too long in the desert at the end, in my opinion. It begins with some imaginary brainstorming by buddies to come up with an ending for Marty’s script. It’s supposed to be a peaceful retreat but the wrong guys are called out of Los Angeles, and a bloody rendezvous is on. Marty tries to prevent such clichés from acting out, and so a very unlikely and unpredictable showdown does happen. But still, it’s too long. But Walken’s final monologue is loony in the right bizarro way that is the actor’s trademark.
109 Minutes. Rated R.
BLACK COMEDY / BLOODLUST / WEEKEND VIEWING DEBAUCHERY
Film Cousins: “The Big Lebowski” (1997); “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang” (2005); “In Bruges” (2009); “The Guard” (2011).
