‘Seven Psychopaths’ Review: An Absurd Black Comedy

Seven Psychopaths’ is a 2012 collaboration between ‘In Bruges’ Gold Award-winning writer-director Martin McDonagh and Colin Farrell, and features a group of acting stars, including Sam Rockwell, Oscar winner Christopher Walken, Oscar-nominated Woody Harrelson, to add a lot of color to the film.

The whole film is a mixture of absurd and unrestrained violence, and a little touching amusing warmth, can be said to be a very creative black comedy.

The plot depicts an uninspired film screenwriter Marty (Colin Farrell) geeky friends Billy (Sam Rockwell) and Hans (Christopher Walken), their nonsensical prank is not complimentary, the two dare to kidnap the local mobster Charlie (Woody Harrelson)’s dog.

This move, accidentally caused a fishy storm in the local mob society ……

The subject matter of this film is actually somewhat similar to explore the screenwriter’s creative anxiety of the film ‘Barton Fink’, the kind of real illusion intertwined style, or ‘Bullets Over Broadway’ in which even the killer bodyguard can become a great screenwriter’s satirical ideas.

The movie opens eerily with two gangsters, talking about the famous American historical robber John Herbert Dillinger (the movie ‘L’instinct de mort’ Public Enemies is the story of his life), resulting in a masked killer gradually approaching from afar and taking them out. A masked killer approaches from afar and takes them both out in one fell swoop.

This scene gangster talk gangster, and then killed by another gangster bridge. This is not also like this film, a screenwriter (Colin Farrell) wanted to write a story related to crazy people, but ended up getting a bunch of crazy people (Sam Rockwell, etc.) to harm themselves.

For example, Colin Farrell’s screenwriter Marty has been ridiculed by his actor friend Billy for being an alcoholic Irishman (Colin Farrell himself is Irish), and Billy will criticize Marty’s wife (Abbie Cornish) for being an Australian bitch, while Abbie Cornish is an Australian actress herself.

In the film, Christopher Walken, the boss of the theft syndicate criticized the script written by screenwriter Marty, female characters are too shallow, indirectly sarcastic Hollywood scripts do not pay attention to the role of women.

In fact, it’s also a bit self-deprecating, because there really aren’t any heavy female characters in this masculine black comedy.

The most unconventional thing about the movie is that it intersperses some countryside anecdotes or historical events, such as the crazy couple played by rock star Tom Waits, who will run to find the Zodiac killer (the movie ‘Zodiac’ is about its true story) and then be lynched and severely punished.

Another example is the part of the play within a play, also arranged to want to retaliate against the U.S. military Vietnamese came to the United States to try to carry out assassination missions, this part is linked to the 1963 Vietnamese monks to extreme self-immolation to protest the real events of the authorities.

The film is not lacking in such arrangements of interlacing or reinterpreting the characters in the play with the characters in the film (or the real ones).

Another example is that this film also has a tribute to ‘Paris, Texas’, so ‘Paris, Texas’ male lead Harry Dean Stanton specially guest starred in a play within a play for his daughter’s revenge on the old man, the old man role is actually a rewrite of a role in the film.

Martin McDonagh, the writer-director of ‘Seven Psychopaths’, uses such a “post-establishment” approach and a mocking genre rewritten in a distorted way, together with relentlessly violent scenes and black humor, like a combination of the Coen brothers and Quentin Tarantino, and even a bit of Charlie Kaufman style. Even a little Charlie Kaufman style of post-production.

At the end of the film, a group of people ran to the desert for refuge, and presented a very different road movie flavor from the previous, the structure of the film is really special.

There are two instances of American singer Linda Ronstadt’s 1967 hit “Different Drum” in the film, and the film’s use of the song is appropriate.

The male lead Colin Farrell performance still has its level, crazy friend Sam Rockwell crazy and arrogant performance, is also its usual masterpiece, Woody Harrelson will be both humorous and brutal gangster, the love of dogs like paranoid character also interpreted quite in place.

But the most powerful or Oscar winner Christopher Walken, an unfathomable eerie and treacherous expression, but with an incomparable tender deep feelings, a scene of pain after the loss of a loved one to the killer’s calm sneer is really mind-boggling high performance, is really breathtaking.