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’?