All Critics (114)
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Top Critics (39)
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Fresh (96)
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Rotten (18)
Each time it appears that McDonagh, who also directed, has written himself into a cul de sac, he off-roads the movie (sometimes literally) into fresh territory.
Yes, it's a lot to keep track of, but writer-director Martin McDonagh does so with deft humor as the film hurls toward a desert climax, foreshadowed in one of Billy and Marty's exchanges.
For about 75 minutes, Seven Psychopaths is a rollicking good movie - kinetic, clever, funny, and brutal. Then, inexplicably, it falls apart.
McDonagh sets real (and very different) moods for his stories-within-stories. The Los Angeles locations - apart from the obligatory Hollywood sign - seem fresh.
This flick never pretends to be anything but a bright hall of fun-house mirrors. And there, so gloriously distorted, gargoyles look right at home.
While "Seven Psychopaths" is indeed as crazy as it sounds, it's not nearly as smart as it thinks it is.
Smart enough to work on multiple levels: as a witty salute to masculine '70s cinema...as a deconstruction of same...and as an existential consideration of the role of self-expression in ascribing meaning to life...
It doesn't add up to much. Thankfully, it knows how to deliver a good time along the way.
It's like a BOONDOCK SAINTS for people who have "good" taste in movies.
How do we suppress our need for moral and even physical justice if we believe that violence leads to damnation? Is there a chance to...oh, never mind. Let's just blow someone's brains out.
Doesn't quite hold together at the end, but it's quite audacious, and supremely entertaining throughout.
Uneven, but defiantly so, creating immense personality along the way, helping to absorb the randomness of the screenplay and his numerous tangents.
This is what Adaptation might've looked like had Charlie Kaufman been hired to pen a flippantly nihilistic wiseguy saga instead of an unfilmable ode to orchids.
This all-star cast -- coupled with the crisp and creative script -- makes Seven Psychopaths a film you would be crazy not to see.
...often sublimely hilarious, with Sam Rockwell and Christopher Walken doing their loony best to keep the ramshackle affair going.
So many characters require a deft, experienced hand at the helm and [Martin] McDonagh has not achieved that level of experience, yet.
Moviegoers who can handle philosophical musings accompanied by exploding heads will find that McDonagh has delivered another sharp and entertaining film.
It's about what you'd expect from the filmmaker whose first feature, In Bruges, featured a coke-addled dwarf pontificating about the impending race riots to a pair of Belgian hookers.
Seven Psychopaths isn't a great movie -- there are stretches where it has too much going on for its own good -- but it is an inspired, strange, and occasionally choke-on-your-popcorn funny ensemble piece.
For a film about nothing, 'Seven Psychopaths' is awfully entertaining.
The movie's meta-ness is a reliable source of laughs, but it's also somewhat exhausting.
Rockwell is impressive as the manic Billy, while Walken steals his scenes as he gives Hans a world-weary seriousness that keeps McDonagh's weird world nicely grounded.
With a truly original script, premise, and insightful structural deconstruction, Seven Psychopaths offers entertainment at its sharpest and most perceptive.
McDonagh is such a clever writer, his dialogue and directions sparkle with such amazing clarity, that you can't help but be impressed.
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