7 Psychos

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. Colin Farrell, despite his good acting, remains a bit pale next to his great co-stars and is even played against the wall by Tom Waits in his short guest appearance, and some of the bizarreness seems too forced, but the positive aspects weigh heavy enough in the end to make such flaws almost completely forgotten. For even if McDonagh can't quite reach the level of See Bruges.and Die, 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, in the end there is also a more than deserved: Absolutely worth seeing!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp