Review: #LFF2012: Seven Psychopaths

For a film about the perils of screenwriting, Seven Psychopaths sure could have used a few extra drafts. Far from the dognapping caper the trailers would have you believe, writer/director Martin McDonagh's follow-up to In Bruges is actually a far darker, way more ambitious meta comedy about a man trying to write a genuinely heartfelt movie in spite of the various ridiculous incidents that seem determined to inform it. That it immediately invokes unfavourable comparisons to Adaptation does not necessarily make Seven Psychopaths a failure, but you do find yourself wishing that McDonagh had the foresight to intentionally ruin his own movie with as much precision as Charlie Kaufman had.