Delayed Reaction: Seven Psychopaths

The Pitch: A writer has writers block and decides to make a movie about it. And a lot of people die.

By all means, Seven Psychopaths is a movie I should love. First of all, I've been wanting to see it for five years now, and I'm the kind of person who will convince myself something was good just to pay off my commitment to it. More substantially of note is the excellent cast. Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, Christopher Walken, and Woody Harrelson is a quartet of actors who consistently are the best thing in any movie they appear in, and they are all playing to their strengths in this. The structure of the film is a meta-commentary of the writing process, which my love of movies from Stranger Than Fiction to Alex & Emma indicate that that should be a slam dunk. Writer/Director Martin McDounagh has a sensibility that I want to like (and did when I saw In Bruges a second time). Really, if you compare the humor in something I loved, like Free Fire, with Seven Psychopaths, it's very similar.

However, for some reason, I didn't care for the movie. The actors all playing to their strengths veered into the actors giving overly familiar performances. The meta-script about the writing process tried a little too hard to be clever. Much like the first time I saw McDounagh's In Bruges, I just didn't get what the big deal was. Perhaps with another viewing a lot of this would work better. And that's a case where outside adulation actually helps. I heard about In Bruges being great for years after I saw it the first time and didn't care for it. Eventually, I rewatched it to figure out what I was missing. On the contrary, I don't think I've heard anyone mention Seven Psychopaths since it was in theaters. In other words, I didn't care for it and I'll never figure out why, because I won't be revisiting it.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend