Seven Psychopaths (2012) Review

 

Seven Psychopaths (2012)

Seven Psychopaths follows Marty, Billy, and Hans—a writer, serial killer, and a quaker—have to hide out in the desert after Billy steals a crazy guys dog.

I’ve been looking for any kind of plot or deeper meaning behind this film for about an hour now, and it’s evident that that was not the point. The whole movie revolves around Billy wanting to write the ending to Martys screenplay really, heavily romancing the clichés of toying with clichés, so that every time you begin to understand, it throws another wild card at you. The idea within the screenplay is also neat because it, at first, seems like 7 random stories about more fictional based characters, but they all come full circle to be real people, 2 of which being Billy himself. These three characters shouldn’t work and are often times at odds with another, but there’s a sense to made out of how they themselves, including Marty, are psychopaths, each looking for their own storybook endings.

The films main bright spot is the acting, featuring Collin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, and Christopher Walken, as well as Woody Harrelson as the antagonist who just wants his dog back. Rockwell is superb, seeming like nothing more than a pretty dishonest and conniving friend to Marty, while really being the mastermind being the film as a duel personality psychopath who does everything for the sake of Marty’s story. I also love the chemistry between Farrell and Walken, as more of a mentor/mentee type, with Walken incidentally being a character in his story, in a self parodying sort of way. The add such depth, humor, and violence to seemingly menial roles that it’s impossible not to love them.

Seven Psychopaths is a hilariously violent meta comedy about the struggle of writing a cohesive and engaging story, under the guise of living through one. The whole movie, which felt like a mixture of Tarantino and the Cohen Brothers, is about him struggling to create a story about psychopaths, when the real story and psychopaths are right there the whole time, leading to a “final battle” in the desert that is equally as disappointing to us as it is to Billy, who just wants to create the perfect story.

7.3/10