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

For a long time I was very bitter that the people who controlled the means of anybody ever hearing my songs were never gonna play them. They only favored music that I specifically and particularly hated, and I wanted them dead. Suddenly, there was another avenue. I started hearing my stuff coming out of bars and then it started to happen little by little -- a movie song here or a TV ad there.

—Iggy Pop