Early in In Bruges, the hit man Ken (Brendan Gleeson) is counting out coins, and he ends up 10 cents short of the admission price for a historic attraction. He pleads with the cashier to let him in, but the man insists that it costs five euros to get in. Exasperated, Ken pulls out a 50-euro bill.
It’s a tantalizing bit of character color. But when that detail becomes important late in the movie, the life gets sucks out of it; it becomes a hollow contrivance instead of an ambiguous hint of a man.
That happens a lot in Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges.
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Burnt Toast