In Bruges (DVD)

This is a gem. A highly original and at every turn an intelligently shaped gem. And it's better each time you watch it. The setting is amazing, the score is haunting, the jokes are bolder and funnier and more frequent than any recent film can manage, and the core performances are Oscar-level acting. Brendan Gleeson is the unglamorous hit-man enraptured by the canals and buildings of the city of Bruges, Colin Farrell is the incompetent trainee, who's in Bruges after the botched assassination of a priest - over which he feels guilty because a little boy was shot in the course of the job - and he's so troubled he simply detests Bruges. One is protective, one is anarchic, and nothing is what it seems. Gradually new dimensions open up, most of them hopeful, but generally all too late. If you've already seen this in the cinema, the bonus of the dvd is a big handful of deleted scenes, which are often themselves very funny, and which further flesh out the doom-laden baggage from the past each of the protagonists is carrying.

Martin McDonagh is a risk-taker, who's put his high repute as a playwright on the the line, and won through. His brief appearances and comments in the dvd bonus material are mesmeric. It's an indictment of the film industry that there's not been writer-director cinema at this level of quality and independence since the emergence of Almodovar in 1980s Spain. In Bruges has broken through those barriers, and - like McDonagh's Oscar-winning short, Six Shooter - In Bruges looks like it's already heading for cult status. Buy it now!