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Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes. Written and directed by Martin McDonagh. Rated R. 107 minutes. Focus Features.

In Bruges feels like something of a movie miracle. An unpredictable, moving meditation on ethics and courage among hit men, it’s an unconventional film with two complex characters whom we initially assume will drive an odd couple buddy picture, and end up surprising us in ways most movie characters can’t touch. To describe the plot will tell you little about how the film plays, superbly rendered as a sweet character comedy-drama by writer/director Martin McDonagh and his two fine actors.

Hit men Ray (Colin Farrell) and Ken (Brendan Gleeson) are sent by crime boss Harry (Ralph Fiennes) to medieval Belgian city Bruges to hide out and await directions after finishing a particularly messy job. They couldn’t be more opposite. Ken, the career killer and older of the pair, is a tourist at heart and enthralled with the Bruges’ history and architecture. Ray, from Dublin, much younger and impatient, is bored with the history lesson and resents sharing a cramped room with his aged partner.

The film sets this dilemma up quickly and then the film’s real pleasures begin. Ken is satisfied with his vacation in stunning Bruges, whose soaring architecture is a prominent character here. It is rare for a city to be critical to its story, and after seeing this film it is impossible to imagine McDonagh setting the film anywhere else. Ken finds himself undergoing somewhat of a conscience conversion related to the wandering freedom experienced during his connection to this "fairy-tale" place. 

Restless Ray mixes in with the locals, including a beautiful drug dealer (Clemence Poesy) with a weak-willed, skinhead boyfriend (Jeremie Renier), and a racist American actor (Jordan Prentice) in Bruges shooting a Euro-trash art film, who also happens to be an egotistical dwarf, or "midget" as Ray continually addresses him. They do coke with prostitutes and debate the role of the Vietnamese in a black on white race war, while Ray warns him of how most midgets commit suicide, including Herve Villechaize from Fantasy Island fame. As played by Farrell with a straight face, Ray’s politically incorrect cluelessness both here and addressing overweight American tourists is funny indeed.

The fates of each dovetail in the film’s climax, which truly surprised me with its intersection of matter-of-fact ethics among criminals. By the time Harry shows up to set things straight, there are two scenes where Gleeson and Fiennes behave according to their own moral codes and principles. Both arrive at logical conclusions—one melancholy, and the other ironic.

Colin Farrell gets one of his very best roles as Ray, the twitchy and insecure hit man in the wrong line of work. Stricken with guilt over causing the inadvertent death of child, he has several affecting moments of vulnerability. But there is also a charming, child-like insecurity about him, romancing a girl he assumes is out of his league.

Farrell gets to play many notes here, from tough guy to feather-light shyness to despair over demons. He went dark in Woody Allen’s Cassandra’s Dream to similar effect, also filled with self-loathing over participation in a murder. After a relatively quiet period, he has reinvented himself as an emotionally detailed character actor, ushering in a solid second act of his career.

And then the great Brendan Gleeson, with his craggy face that breaks to show tenderness and compassion late in the film, offers a powerfully civilized moment opposite Fiennes atop a bell tower, handled with graceful, quiet resignation, absorbing both us and his fellow actor. It could have gone many different directions, but Gleeson understands the power here is in the words, not the guns. It’s something to see.

While In Bruges may sound like an odd mix of Tarantino cool and Guy Ritchie mayhem, it feels nothing like either. Rather, here is a movie with two likable chaps who happen to do a terrible job, and not that well, and end up realizing how much they truly like—and need—each other.

One of the great ones.

- Lee Shoquist