This has been out for a while now but I really wanted to catch it before it disappeared from cinemas. I’ve loved all of Martin McDonagh’s previous films and the promise of seeing Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson together again in one of his – after the fantastic IN BRUGES – was enormously exciting.
Alas, it was a disappointment. It certainly looks beautiful, and all the performances were undeniably great. But as a story it was all just relentlessly miserable and depressing. It begins as a Tragedy and ends as… well, even more tragedy-y! I wasn’t expecting a chuckle-fest after Three Billboards, but this was on another level of bleakness and misery. It felt like Father Ted without the jokes. It’s not badly written, but it’s got a glacial sense of pace and I guess you’d need to muster a deeply gallows-sense of humour to find it wryly amusing. I just found it exhausting.
On the plus side, it really convinced me that escaping the big city for small town rural living is a truly terrible idea. I’ve never appreciated growing up in London more!
