The next film we watched along our virtual backpacking trek through Europe, at our current stop in #Belgium was the 2008 movie, In Bruges. This was a pretty dark flick, so we kept it to a date night, and didn't include the kiddo in watching this one.
I'll start by saying that this movie did a beautiful job of highlighting a truly fairytale city, as the main characters often refer to it (and they use a few more expletives to do so!). As gruesome as this film is, it really does a good job of making you want to book a ticket to visit at your next opportunity.
The two lead characters are hitmen from Dublin who are sent to hide out in Bruges after a job gone very wrong. While there, they are instructed by their boss to enjoy the sights and explore the streets and canals. As they do so, we get a chance to see many of the attractions we explored in our post earlier this week featuring all the most fun things to do in Belgium. We also were able to catch many of the places we visited in person on our visit a few years ago. So, in that sense, this was a wonderful way to begin to close out this week's virtual visit.
Of the two hired assassins, the much younger one (who is most reluctant to be spending time in Bruges) ends up having the tables turned on him, and instead of being the killer, he becomes the target. Such a visually gory movie is not usually my first choice, but it was good to take a step out of my comfort zone, and the imagery of the film helped to offset that a bit.
One significant critique I walked away with was how little care was taken with casual racism and ableism in this movie. It was not necessary to the plot line, and in fact, it distracted me from it quite a bit. I'm hopeful that we've begun to move away from relying on such ugly tactics as plot and humor devices in our entertainment. For this reason, I can't enthusiastically recommend it, which is a shame, as it otherwise offers beautiful insight into a magical city.
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