journal features

movie review - In Bruges

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Tokyo, 2010.05.03

This is a story about some British gangsters. They have a problem with a young member of their "order". While assassinating a priest (as you do) the fellow killed an alter boy. According to the boss's "code", the young man must die. So he sends the fellow and a minder to Bruges, in Belgium. I'd never heard of it, but apparently it's one of those Europeans cities that's managed to avoid being paved and made into a generic Toronto/Frankfurt/Minneapolis/etc. The boss man figures it'd be nice to let the young fellow have a final laugh before he's in turn executed.

Well, things don't go to plan.

With an excellent cast and a maddening plot of misunderstanding and senseless violence, this is substantially better than I expected.

Recommended.

rand()m quote

Immature poets imitate mature poets steal bad poets deface what they take and good poets make it into something better or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique utterly different than that from which it is torn the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time or alien in language or diverse in interest.

—T.S. Eliot