Seven Psychopaths

Seen for the first time in October 2012.

I liked this better than “In Bruges,” but then I really didn’t like “In Bruges” as much as every other person I’ve ever met did. I thought “In Bruges” was -shrug- okay, but not as good as, say, “Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels.” For some reason, though, “In Bruges” was a movie for people to say ridiculous things like “It was more substance than style,” or “it’s deeper than a Tarantino film.” I think people who say things like this are deeply, unsympathetically stupid.

I think the conceit that we’re getting anything more than stylishly entertaining thrills from Seven Psychopaths is so much harder to maintain when the nods at deepness are so transparently superficial that they themselves become little more than a stylish thrill in and of themselves. It’s like turning the idea of being thoughtful and spiritual into just another bright and shiny object for mesmerizing the apes. This shit is as deep as the deepness of nazi-hating in “Inglorious Basterds,” but Tarantino’s not oblivious to what he’s doing.

You know what would have been ballsy? If instead of the Vietnamese psychopath, he had been an Iraqi psychopath. Too political? Too distracting? Why get hung up on fresh horrors of our own complicity when we wanna be safe in the womb enjoying some cool violence and humorous dialogue amongst hoodlums. Maybe in 30 years, your children will be able to watch that movie without reflexively triggering some sort of Manichean hallucination.

This was “Adaptations”-esque. There are funny parts. Christopher Walken and Sam Rockwell are great. There’s some good violence too. This is more entertaining than “In Bruges.” Yes, it does try to comment on its own genre. It does try to give us a parody of sorts. It thinks its smarter by doing so. It’s okay. It’s okay that its too proud of itself. It’s entertaining for exactly the same reasons as “Snatch,” or whatever. Those reasons are good enough for me. Grade B-.