Seven Psychopaths (2012)

Were it released in a previous decade, Martin McDonagh’s Seven Psychopaths could have been a revelation. It’s weird to think that the self-referential writer’s block comedy/drama has become a genre unto itself, but here we are, and as a result Seven Psychopaths doesn’t seem nearly as brilliant as it might have 15 years ago. It’s still wickedly entertaining, mostly because McDonagh has a unique ear for profane dialogue that few other writers can match. It’s a fun, violent and intermittently clever yarn, but it’s a little disappointing that the pieces don’t cohere as well as they could have.

Colin Farrell is Marty Faranan, a blatant McDonagh surrogate who is struggling with his new screenplay. Actually, there is no complete screenplay yet; all he has is the title of Seven Psychopaths. He makes little progress writing the script, and mostly he spends his time drinking and hanging with his actor friend Billy (Sam Rockwell). Billy has a side gig as a dog kidnapper, and he makes quite a bit of money taking dogs, waiting until a reward is offered, and then returning them to their owners. One day, he and his friend Hans (Christopher Walken) steal a dog that belongs to the violent gangster Charlie Costello (Woody Harrelson). After that, things just get weirder.

It isn’t very helpful to simply label Seven Psychopaths an Adaptation ripoff, though I spent much of the movie wondering if McDonagh had ever seen that film. Like Adaptation, his movie is often a meta-commentary in which the writer’s surrogate spends much of the film wanting to break free from Hollywood formula yet finds himself in the midst of a potentially standard thriller. In many ways, the Charlie/Donald relationship in Adaptation isn’t so different than the Marty/Billy relationship here. Marty wants to take his script in a bold new direction. Billy just wants him to write a movie with lots of bloody shootouts.

If it weren’t for McDonagh’s razor-sharp writing style, it would much easier to dismiss Seven Psychopaths. Even though we’ve seen the basic gist before in films like Adaptation, McDonagh still has plenty of ideas to throw at you. Within this story, there are several short stories in progress in which Marty describes who the seven psychopaths in his screenplay are going to be. For inspiration, he looks to real life figures. Other times he just thinks of the most twisted scenario imaginable. One tale involving an angry Quaker is particularly memorable.

The film simply meanders on from there, and it’s not always clear why we’re seeing what we’re seeing at any given moment. Tom Waits pops by for a brief role as a potential psychopath, but he never really fits in to the bigger picture. Like so many other aspects of the film, it feels like McDonagh threw him in there because he thought he was a cool idea. Seven Psychopaths is great fun at its best, but it hurts itself by never really being about anything besides its own creation. It is also wholly aware of how clever it is, or at least how clever it is trying to be. It earns this rather cocky attitude about 50 percent of the time. Well, maybe a little more than that.

The case is great across the board here, though even the film admits that it doesn’t exactly have the most well-developed female characters. However, it is Rockwell who completely kills it in this movie. He’s one of those actors that you know is great, but it’s easy to forget how great until you put him in a role as terrific as this one. His is a performance filled with energy and inspired kookiness, and despite some of the truly questionable things we see him do he always just seems like a lovable weirdo. Though Farrell’s character is the closest thing we have to a protagonist, it’s Rockwell who is the heart and soul of this movie. Like McDonagh, he is willing to take everything as far as it could possibly go, even if it isn’t always such a great idea.

Grade: B