7 Psychos - Blu-Ray

Film: Hollywood writer Marty (Colin Farrell) is desperate for inspiration for his new screenplay. He already has a title and an idea. Seven psychopaths are to be the focus of the story. But what makes them psychopaths and how their stories connect is something Marty racks his brains over day after day, to the utter despair of his girlfriend (Abbie Cornish), without delivering results. His buddy Billy (Sam Rockwell) wants to help him out. Not only does he place an ad for psychopaths to contact Marty with their stories. He himself, along with his partner Hans (Christopher Walken), makes a pretty convincing psychopath as a professional dog kidnapper. The story gets really dangerous for Marty, however, when Billy kidnaps the Shih Tzu of choleric gangster boss Charlie (Woody Harrelson), of all people, and suddenly the author is also on his hit list...

Following his superb feature debut Seeing Bruges...and Dying, Martin McDonagh now delivers the long-awaited follow-up with 7 Psychos. Expectations were certainly high after the multi-award winning first feature, which was brimming with originality and wicked humour. McDonagh obviously tries to live up to these high expectations without running the risk of simply repeating himself. The whole thing then starts with a very promising opening sequence, which can please with an amusing dialogue and a surprising finale. And also the wonderfully loopy play of Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson and Christopher Walken can the film for itself.

Netheless remains a little disappointment at the end. 7 Psychos far too rarely manages to weave its numerous successful individual ideas into a coherent whole. Moments of real genius can only really unfold embedded in the right environment. And that's unfortunately only rarely the case here. So the whole thing seems not only in places too episodic, but also completely overloaded, which diminishes the fun of this bloody rogue comedy sustainable.

But this is just complaining on a high level, triggered by the high expectations that Bruges see...and die has stoked. For taken on its own terms, 7 Psychos is, despite its flaws, the best entertainment cinema of the particularly weird kind. While Colin Farrell, despite his fine acting, remains somewhat pale next to his great co-stars and is even upstaged by Tom Waits in the latter's brief guest appearance, and while some of the bizarreness feels too contrived, the positives ultimately weigh heavily enough to make such flaws almost completely forgettable. Because even if McDonagh can't quite reach the level of Seeing Bruges...and Dying, his second feature film is also brimming with original ideas that run counter to common plot patterns and can convince with a mixture of wordplay, over-the-top brutality and quirky character sketches.

So, if you like gangster comedies of the slightly weirder kind, if you appreciate black humor and characters that are broken in an amusing way, and if you don't always need mainstream entertainment, you can be warmly recommended a visit to the 7 Psychos. It's not a masterpiece, but it's better than some of the usual genre movies. Therefore, there is also a more than deserved in the end: Absolutely worth seeing!

Picture + Sound: The picture is very clean, soiling or image distortions you look in vain here. The overall sharpness is on a good level and especially in the brighter sequences, even the smallest details are well recognizable. Only the contrasts seem here and there a little too exaggerated, but this is only marginally negative. The sound is available in DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix, which can prove its full power, however, only rarely. Especially in the last minutes, it crashes occasionally quite powerful from the surround boxes, but in many moments, the action is also determined only by dialogue or music. Good!

Extras: The disc has just over 50 minutes of bonus material to offer. The best extra is undoubtedly the additional scenes (about 14 mins), which have some genuinely amusing moments to offer. The rest of the extras are unfortunately a bit superficial, as they are primarily promo material. This goes for the nine interviews, which are never much longer than around 2 minutes, as well as the six featurettes, which with a total running time of just 11 minutes are far from being able to reveal any really in-depth information about the making of the film. A few short outtakes (approx. 2 min.) and uncommented B-Roll footage (approx. 5 min.) are also on the program in addition to the trailer. The additional material is rounded off by a bonus feature that is as absurd as it is bizarrely funny: in 7 Psychocats, the trailer was re-enacted with cats, which is a must-see!

Conclusion: 7 Psychos doesn't match the brilliance of its predecessor, See Bruges...and Die, but on its own terms it's a delightfully offbeat, wonderfully over-the-top brutal gangster comedy that's absolutely worth seeing for the numerous great individual ideas and great cast alone. The Blu-Ray presents the film in good picture and sound quality, the extras are a bit superficial, but have to offer a few really good moments with the additional scenes, among others. So all in all: for lovers of the somewhat weirder gangster cinema an absolute must!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp