When it comes to metafiction, the line between genius and intellectual masturbation can get pretty damn thin. The "genre" (for lack of a better word) is a creative Far West by definition, so there are no set rules. As long as the story collapses unto itself at the end , you've got yourself a metafiction. "Armageddon" as David Foster Wallace would call it, is the sole rule. What is metafiction, exactly? It's a self-conscious story. Usually, its object is fiction itself and sandpapers the layers of reality between both as the narration progresses. SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS is metafiction. It's as by-the-book as it gets, it has a wonderful sense of humor and despite requiring quite a bit of patience, it's not going to leave you hanging. It's not the self-absobed-bullshit kind of metafiction.
Martin (Collin Farrell) is a screenwriter with this idea for a movie called Seven Psychopaths. Only problem, he doesn't know anything about it, except for the title. He doesn't want it to be violent, he wants it to be beautiful and meditative. His friend Billy (Sam Rockwell) is a dog kidnapper. He and his partner Hans (Christopher Walken) kidnap dogs and return them whenever the owner offers a reward. They snag a Shih Tzu from the sidewalk which belongs to psychopathic crime boss Charlie Costello (Woody Harrelson) and reality for both Martin and Billy takes a dip into a psychopathic universe. Is Martin going through what he needs to finish his screenplay? Billy sure seems to think so and he wants to help. Boy, does he want to help.
I sat through the first half of SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS, unsure of what exactly I was watching. The variables of metafiction were present, but writer and director Martin McDonagh didn't seem to understand their nature. It seemed to be a semi-clever movie about lack of inspiration. Turned out I was getting lulled into a false sense of security about my own cleverness. About half-way in, reality collapses and the movie starts getting highly self-aware. The movie revisits its half-baked decisions of the first half, makes fun of movie clichés and has a wicked good time deconstructing the conventions of crime fiction. It's not overly intellectual and its tremendous comedic timing (thanks to acting powerhouses such as Walken, Harrelson and Rockwell) keeps the spirits up.
In the desert, thing can get pretty fucking abstract sometimes.
Colin Farrell's character seems deliberately tamed, in the middle of this bizarro underworld, but it's part of the metafictional schtik. Martin has the same name than the writer and director of this movie, which is not a coincidence and alludes to the fact the script of SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS is a truncated, half-memoir/half-movie that didn't work. So Martin is not supposed to be fun. He's not really a part of that universe.That everything you see in that movie is part deliriums fueled by lack of inspiration and half real. That the kind of engaging puzzles metafiction can offer. I like it and it's hard not to when deliver with such a wacky sense of humor.
SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS is not a grab-you-right-off-the-bat kind of deal. It's kind of an intellectual bad trip. It's not self-satisfied, but it requires a stomach for abstraction, lots of patience and an open mind. I loved it, but the first part almost beat the interest out of me (which I believe is the point of the whole thing). You just have to power it out, because the joke will be on you if you don't. Clever metafiction, strong acting and self-aware humor makes the movie greater than the sum of its parts. SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS is bound to become an oddball cult classic that airs in midnight screening in independent cinemas. It's an art movie, but not really. It's trying to be a crime movie, but it fails somewhat. It lands in a no man's land, somewhere in between and ends up being a bona fide original piece of art.
THREE STARS
