User blog:Porterfield/Seven Psychopaths Review Roundup

In no particular order, here are seven things about Seven Psychopaths that are consistently mentioned throughout the dozens of reviews I have read:


 * 1) It is cartoonish. Seriously, many critics have related this movie to cartoons.
 * 2) This movie will become a cult comedy, but it's very, very dark. If that contradiction doesn't intrigue you, I don't know what will.
 * 3) The general screen presence of Christopher Walken and the way he delivers lines is without equal. Not a critic in the world has a negative thing to say about his performance.
 * 4) Seven Psychopaths is probably not as clever/smart/sophisticated/witty/deep as director Martin McDonagh's last film, In Bruges (which also starred Colin Farrell)
 * 5) The ensemble cast is incredibly entertaining. Psychotic, like the title says, but entertaining.
 * 6) Film critic Rex Reed (see the "Hated It" section below) takes his job, and life in general, way too seriously.
 * 7) Colin Farrell is the Yin to Sam Rockwell's Yang. They make a great, harmonious pair on screen.

Check out the reviews below and write your own in the comments section below.

Colin Covert - Minneapolis Star Tribune
Score: 4 out of 4 stars

Excerpt: Every so often -- not very often, at that -- you see a movie that leaves you stumbling out of the theater in a state of giddy, elated vertigo. That's what you get from "Seven Psychopaths," a howlingly funny Los Angeles crime farce overstuffed with flaky comedy, gore, idiosyncrasy, genius dialogue, wild cameo performances and an embarrassment of stars.

Glenn Kenny - MSN Movies
Score: 4 out of 5 stars

Excerpt: The movie, written and directed by the esteemed and extreme Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, delights in pulling the rug out from under the audience every seven minutes or so, but it does this pulling in such cerebrally and cinematically exciting ways that once you shake it off, you're ready for the next tumble.

Billy Goodykoontz - Arizona Republic
Score: 4 out of 5 stars

Excerpt: Instead, "Seven Psychopaths" is a dark, dark lark, bolstered by a crazy-and-proud-of-it performance by Sam Rockwell, which is balanced by a controlled one from Colin Farrell. Throw in Christopher Walken somewhere in between and you've got a delightfully nuts, compulsively watchable film. Woody Harrelson and Tom Waits as a psychopathic gangster and a serial killer of serial killers are just gravy.

Claudia Puig - USA Today
Score: 3.5 out of 4 stars

Excerpt: Think Pulp Fiction with more laughs and cartoonish violence, crossed with an edgier Ocean's Eleven and touches of The Usual Suspects and Smokin' Aces. Then add a choice cast of actors as unhinged characters who could easily be 10-year-old boys -- if those boys were also mental cases.

Roger Ebert - Chicago Sun-Times
Score: 3.5 out of 4 stars

Excerpt: The film's climax takes place in the archetypal desert hills of a B-Western, where Marty, Billy and Hans find themselves hiding out from the relentless Charlie with the Shih Tzu. The logic of this action, which circles around the question of who can be trusted by whom, and for whose reasons, is sort of an elaboration of the elegant geometry in the Mexican Standoff in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly."

Manohla Dargis - New York Times
Score: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Excerpt: Mr. Walken, who can enunciate any scrap of throwaway dialogue into something listenable, is an extra special Mad Hatter party incarnate. The dependably watchable Mr. Farrell, meanwhile, holds the center well, despite having to share most of his scenes with a boatload of showboaters.

Peter Howell - Toronto Star
Score: 3 out of 4 stars

Excerpt: The really crazy thing about Seven Psychopaths is how much sense it makes, in a weird sort of way. And how much fun it has while doing so. Writer/director Martin McDonagh (In Bruges) and his eager star conscripts have made a crazy and violent film to mock crazy and violent films. It’s like making a Looney Tunes cartoon about Looney Tunes cartoons.

Peter Travers - Rolling Stone
Score: 3 out of 4 stars

Excerpt: What movie junkie out there wouldn't leap at the chance to see merry pranksters such as Christopher Walken, Sam Rockwell and Woody Harrelson go bug-fuck nuts in something called Seven Psychopaths? Walken, his line readings a thing of bizarro beauty, is reason enough to sign up.

Steven Rea - Philadelphia Inquirer
Score: 2.5 out of 4 stars

Excerpt: Meta and messy, Seven Psychopaths does not hang together like In Bruges, and as Marty struggles to cobble up a compelling plotline about hit men and serial killers, some of McDonagh's creative desperation seems to bleed onto the screen, too.

Rex Reed - New York Observer
Score: 0 out of 4 stars

Excerpt: Garbage comes in all sizes, and every one of them seems to fit into a load of violent, hateful and incomprehensible trash called Seven Psychopaths. Written by talented Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, who shocked Broadway audiences with dark, funny, gothic creepshows like The Beauty Queen of Leenane, The Cripple of Inishmaan and A Behanding in Spokane,this movie is proof that moving to Hollywood is poisonous Kool-Aid to the creative process.

Wikians Review
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