"Seven Psychopaths" - Film Review

Seven Psychopaths is kind of a mess, particularly in the early going.

It feels like the sort of the movie the studio greenlit even though it had an incomplete script, and much of the movie comes off as if it’s based on the first draft of a screenplay. Many of the ideas are half-formed and amorphous, never truly amounting to much.

The first half the movie is filled with scenes of varying quality that don’t seem to flow in an easy, natural order. The scenes seem to be tossed together haphazardly with no consideration for their placement. 

Though it picks up halfway through the film (the film’s best scene occurs a little over halfway through, involving one of the characters describing his imagined perfect film ending), it continues to be hamstrung by everything that’s come before it. The early portion of the film never finds its footing and it hurts everything that comes after. 

A struggling screenwriter Marty Faranan (Colin Ferrell), whose an alcoholic (because why not), is writing a movie entitled “Seven Psychopaths” (Man, how meta!). A number of these he ends up adopting from real life, including a mysterious murderer who only kills mid to high ranking Italian mafia members or yakuza. Some he makes up and, get this, they turn out to be real (Woe, man). 

He’s joined by his lousy best friend Billy Bickle (Sam Rockwell) who makes a living kidnapping dogs, only to return them to their owner to garner the reward. When one of these dogs belongs to a crazy criminal boss Charlie Costello (Woody Harrelson), he tracks down the dog and Billy and Marty, along with Marty's business partner Hans Kieslowski (Christopher Walken), suddenly find their lives in grave danger. 

It’s one of those films that thinks it’s a whole lot smarter than it actually is. There are a number of self-aware, meta commentaries on films in general and the film itself, and some work really well, but others just feel half-baked. It’s also a film that squanders a great cast, and the cast is frequently better than the material they’re being given.

It's got a lot of zany energy and at times it's pretty amusing, but it's too loosely formed to work as well as it should. 

Grade: B-