In Bruges

Darkly comic and dense with quick dialog, Anglo-Irish playwright Martin McDonagh's first feature recalls films by Quentin Tarantino, in which desperate, violent characters discuss their life choices and relationships while simultaneously committing heinous acts. While the action is showy and the blood spurty, it's the evolving intimacy between Ken and Ray that is most compelling. Gleeson is especially moving as the aging Ken, who's realizing at long last the emotional and ethical costs of his career as he sees the effects on his newbie partner. Their conversations -- undertaken while walking through cobbled streets, ornate churches, and art museums -- suggest a thoughtful underside to all the nasty antics.

At the same time, the film delivers a now-familiar sort of garish brutality, fast-paced and sharply critical of the banalities that shape pop culture. The subplots are cacophonous and telling, one concerning a movie-within-the-movie inspired by Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now (another film about the confusing links between guilt and righteousness) and another involving a "midget" actor named Jimmy (Jordan Prentice), whose frustrations with Ray's simplistic-seeming moral scheme serve as evocative comedy and complicate the movie's examination of genre, morality, and power hierarchies.