I’m a huge fan of Morgan Freeman for his Shawshank Redemption and Seven performances, so when I heard he was pitting his acting talents against the screen presence of Jack Nicholson I had to see it. They play two men who find themselves sharing a hospital room and end up bonding through the news that they are both dying from cancer. When Freeman’s character draws up a “bucket list” - of things to do before you “kick the bucket” - they depart on a road trip completing items they have each added to the list.

One would think that putting these two living legends in a film together should have made for great viewing but instead we get a film that isn’t big enough to handle the personas that come with such stars. Justin Zackham’s script is as predictable and unbelievable as they come and I found myself wondering how film-makers as experienced as Freeman, Nicholson and director Rob Reiner could allow themselves to be lumbered with such poor work. Predictability is the name of the game with this film though. From the very first frame we get the Freeman voice-over and with each passing minute Reiner allows the persona’s to take over.

The biggest looser in all this is Beverly Todd, who plays Freeman’s loyal wife. Theirs is a marriage that has lost its love and petered into habit and respect. What starts out as a very interesting dynamic between Freeman and Todd is quickly discarded and Todd’s performance deserved better. It was the most interesting part of the film as for a moment it was a relationship that could have gone in a number of different directions with the news of Freeman’s character’s impending death.

Even the fact that Freeman develops into his stock wise-character and Nicholson is never more than crazy Jack, the two actors do enough to remain watchable. It is them rather than their characters or the film that I found myself watching though.

Despite attempting to deal with cancer in a more human and positive manner I was disappointed with Reiner’s direction. From his constantly slow pace to his glossing over of the completion of the list in favour of sudden out pourings of revealing stories. I expect more from the director of Stand By Me, When Harry Met Sally and A Few Good Men, but then I have been expecting more of him for over ten years now.

That the talents of Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson could be wasted in such a way was the only surprise of the film, and one can only hope it serves to inspire someone to give them something with a bit more meat to it in the near future. If you still want to see this movie watch the trailer. That will tell you the entire story, but remember the film is even worse!

In Bruges was Written and directed by Martin McDonagh who, until now, was best known for his play writing skills. In Bruges has a freshness to it, perhaps as a result of McDonagh’s inexperience, as it was his debut feature film.

The script was patchy though, and the humour was at times dated feeling. Some of the self referential jokes would have been better suited to an eighties film. And yet, in other places the script had obviously benefitted from not being processed through seven legal teams and nine focus groups.

Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson play the leads, with Ralph Fiennes making an appearance as the London head honcho gangster. Gleeson shines in this film, and Colin Farrell does a great job, particularly in his more emotional scenes. Ralph Fiennes is good, but he gets the short end of the stick in terms of script and doesn’t get a lot of quality scenes to work with. I also couldn’t help thinking I had scene his part played already by Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast.

In Bruges is defniitely worth watching, and it does leave an impression, but I think it will date badly and ultimately be forgotten - however it does show a lot of promise for Martin McDonagh who might go on to come up with some real timeless classics.

Or will he end up filtering out the lovely rawness of In Bruges in his future projects and take the road of Paddy Breathnach who gave us the somewhat similar ‘I Went Down’ before going on to give us the hackneyed ‘Man About Dog’?

I decided to get out The Tiger’s Tail based on two facts. 1. Brendan Gleeson is a great actor and 2. John Boorman can be a great director.

The acting in this film is poor enough, although I wonder is a lot of that to do with the quality of the script… I’m not going to waste too much time reviewing this film, as it has already stolen over an hour and a half of my life.

The Tiger’s Tail tells the story of a successful property developer (benefitting from the economic boom in Ireland known as the Celtic Tiger) who discovers he has a double who is shadowing him, intending to take over his life.

The script hammers in any possible cliched Celtic Tiger reference it possibly can, along with desperately ham-fisted references to the evils of capitalism. There’s property developers, bribes, national stadiums, abuse by clerics, a horribly out of date ‘E’ scene, references to our lack of care for the infirm… the list goes on.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to watch a film where a greedy property developer gets his come-uppance in a modern Ireland, but while there was quite possibly an idea for a film in there somewhere, but unfortunately the script read like the first draft of the plot outline rather than even a first draft script.